IN THE NAME OF US By Ruoxin Xu Coming To The Downtown Urban Arts Festival

Downtown Urban Arts Festival presents an original new play, In the Name of Us by Ruoxin Xu, a Chinese-born, New York based playwright, which will be on stage on May 8th, at 8:00 PM at the Wild Project (195 East 3rd Street, New York, NY 10009).

Written by Ruoxin Xu and directed by Daniel Adams, In the Name of Us is conceived from the vandalism in which Columbia Chinese students' name tags were ripped off from their dorm doors during the Chinese New Year in 2017. In this play, four Chinese young women, who live in four different countries, suddenly realize the influence that their names give them while individually experiencing some important moments in their life.

As a current Columbia University MFA student major in theater playwriting, Ruoxin witnessed first-hand the incident and the reaction from the school official and the Asian community. Feeling the urge to express and explain her frustration and sadness to her American fellows, the play first came about after a theater collaboration class, and soon developed to be a unique piece addressing not only xenophobia and racism, but the meaning behind Chinese characters and Chinese identity. As a bilingual play without subtitles, part of the conversations and monologues are in Mandarin, which will be a unique experience for New York audiences that are used to English-speaking theater. When asked about the intention behind this unusual choice, Ruoxin explained her interest in exploring the universal human feelings and emotions beyond the meaning of language.

Featuring Rui Dun, Alana Fu, Zoe Lau and Amanda Shi, In The Name of Us is written by Ruoxin Xu, directed by Daniel Adams, stage managed by Jianqiao Lu and produced by Yuchen Xia. For tickets and more information, please visit https://www.duafnyc.com/theater.