The Associates Theater Ensemble To Host Post-Show Talkbacks And Affinity Nights

The Associates Theater Ensemble will host a special conversation with Obie Award-winning playwright/performer Haruna Lee (Suicide Forest; Pachinko) with Redemption Storycast member and playwright/librettist Christine Toy Johnson (Broken Ground; Fusong) and playwright Peregrine Teng Heard in a post-show discussion about bringing AAPI stories to the stage on Monday, May 13, following the 7:30pm performance of Redemption Story. 

The Associates will also host two community nights, as part of their World Premiere of Peregrine Teng Heard’s Redemption Story at A.R.T./New York Theatres (502 West 53rd Street, New York, NY 10019), May 4-19. Tickets ($15-$45) are available for advance purchase at www.theassociatestheater.com/redemption-story. 

AAPI Community Night

Thursday, May 9 at 7:30pm, $20 for AAPI community members 

Admission includes drinks and a post-show discussion led by Mei Ann Teo, Artistic Leader of Ping Chong and Company.

One for the Mothers

Sunday, May 12 at 7:30pm

In honor of Connie Lee, mothers who attend our Mother's Day performance get discounted $20 tickets. If you bring your mother or your child as your date, get two tickets for $30. (Then hug it out!)

Haruna Lee is a Taiwanese/Japanese/American theater maker, screenwriter, educator and community steward whose work is rooted in a liberation-based healing practice. Plays include War Lesbian (Dixon Place 2014), Memory Retrograde (Ars Nova 2017, UTR 2018), plural (love) (WP Pipeline Festival 2022, Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab 2019) and Suicide Forest (Ma-Yi Theater & Bushwick Starr 2019, remount 2020), for which they received an Obie Award for Playwriting and Conception and was on the 2020 Kilroys list. Lee has received the Steinberg Playwright Award, the Ollie New Play Award, FCA Grants to Artists Award, a MacDowell Fellowship, the Map Fund Grant, New Dramatists Van Lier Fellowship, and is a currently a member of New Dramatists (2023-2030) and the 2019 artEquity cohort. Their writing has been published by 53rd State Press, Table Work Press, Theater Magazine and Almanac. They’ve collaborated as a writer, performer, and in other myriad roles with artists such as Lynn Nottage, Vanessa German, Aya Ogawa, Ralph Lee, Mac Wellman, NAATCO, Minor Theater, Taylor Mac, Andrea Geyer, David Lang, and Anohni—among others. They’ve written for AppleTV+'s Pachinko and HBO Max’s The Flight Attendant. They co-directed the MFA playwriting program at Brooklyn College (2021-2023), and has taught at Stanford, NYU, Pace, and York College. MFA from Brooklyn College Playwriting and BFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. harunalee.com

Christine Toy Johnson is a Tony and Obie honored, multiple award-winning actor, writer, and advocate for inclusion. As an actor, she’s been featured on Broadway, Off-Broadway, National tours, regionally, on film, and TV. Highlights include Season 2 of Marvel’s “Iron Fist”, the first National tour of Come From Away, and various shows at the Guthrie, Williamstown, and the Public. Her written works have been produced and/or developed by the Roundabout, O’Neill, Abingdon, Ars Nova, Florida Studio Theatre, Prospect Theatre, Weston Playhouse, Village Theatre etc. and are included in the Library of Congress’s Asian Pacific American Playwrights Collection. Treasurer of the Dramatists Guild, founder of the Asian American Theatre Artists Collective, co-founder of AAPAC. Alum of BMI, The Writers Lab, Sarah Lawrence College.

Peregrine Teng Heard is an actor, playwright, and Artistic Director of The Associates Theater Ensemble. Her plays Redemption Story and On The Prowl with Ada Tsiao are O’Neill National Playwrights Conference Semifinalists. Peregrine’s writing has been supported by Fresh Ground Pepper, 59E59, The Hearth, and SPACE on Ryder Farm. In addition to her nine years of collaboration with The Associates, she has created original work with Heartbeat Opera and Piehole. Performance credits include POTUS (Arena Stage), the world premiere of Chuck Mee’s soot & spit (The New Ohio), Ski End (Piehole), Power Couple (ANT Fest), Call Out Culture, or the unbearable whiteness of being (ANTFest), Dragus Maximus (Roulette), Sehnsucht (JACK), and Tom Jones (Actors Theatre of Louisville). Peregrine’s voice can be heard in national commercials for Cadillac, Roomba, Nivea, and Mastercard. She graduated from Yale with a handy BA in East Asian Studies.

Mei Ann Teo is a queer immigrant from Singapore making theatre & film at the intersection of artistic/civic/contemplative practice. As a director/devisor/dramaturg, they create across genres, including music theatre, intermedial participatory work, reimagining classics, and documentary theatre. Teo’s work has toured the U.S. and internationally including Belgium's Festival de Liege, Singapore Theatre Festival, Edinburgh International Fringe, M1 Singapore Fringe Festival, INFANT Experimental Theatre Festival in Novi Sad, Serbia, Beijing International Festival, Dumbo Arts Festival, and the Shanghai International Experimental Theatre Festival. They have directed and/or developed new work at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Goodman Theatre, Public Theater, Berkeley Rep (Ground Floor), Crowded Fire, History Theatre and the National Black Theatre. They have served as the Producing Artistic Director of Musical Theatre Factory, the Associate Artistic Director and Director of New Work of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and is currently an Artistic Leader at Ping Chong and Company. They hold an MFA in Theatre Directing from Columbia University. 

The Associates create, develop, and produce new plays that expose and examine the paradox at the heart of American modes of identity. With a fierce appetite for contradiction and complexity, we give audiences the experience of sinking into another person’s existence: a deep, unnerving experience, and one that can enrich our perception of difference and of commonality. We make our theater through a process of long-term collaboration with generative artists—whether playwrights, devisers, or performers—by nurturing their curiosity and daring in a radically experimental environment.

Previous productions include Grownup at MITU580, Sheila at A.R.T./New York Theatres, The Cousinhood (workshop) at The Center at West Park’s Furnace Festival, Freesome in The Brick’s F*ckfest, and Black Protagonist at 124 Bank Street Theatre (NYIT nomination for Best Original Script).  www.theassociatestheater.com 

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