Rick Shiomi

As a playwright and director, Rick Shiomi (R.A. Shiomi) has been one of the leading figures of the Asian American theater movement since the early 1980s. Relocating to Minnesota in the 1990s, he was one of the founders of Theater Mu and is presently the Artistic Director of Mu Performing Arts. Shiomi's plays include the award winning Yellow Fever, Rosie's Cafe, Uncle Tadao, Play Ball, Mask Dance, The Tale of the Dancing Crane, and Song of the Pipa. He also co-authored the book for Walleye Kid: The Musical. Yellow Fever has been produced off-Broadway, in Japanese in Tokyo, and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Shiomi has had his plays produced by: Asian American Theater Company in San Francisco, Pan Asian Repertory in New York, and East West Players in Los Angeles. Yellow Fever has also been published in the U.S. and Canada, and Mask Dance appears in Bold Words: A Century of Asian American Writing, published by Rutgers University in 2001. He has written screenplays for film and television including the Canadian award winning dramatic series ENG. Shiomi's directing credits include Theater Mu's first full-length production, Mask Dance, Into The Woods, The Walleye Kid, Yellow Face, Song of the Pipa, Maui and the Soul of the Sun, and Flower Drum Song. He has also directed at the Asian American Theater Company in San Francisco and at Interact Theater in Philadelphia. He is the 2007 recipient of the Sally Ordway Irvine Award for Vision and a 2012 recipient of the Ivey Award for Lifetime Achievement. Shiomi is a co-editor of the anthology Asian American Plays for a New Generation published by Temple University Press in 2011, and a founding member of the national network CAATA, the Consortium for Asian American Theaters and Artists. In 2011, the Library of Congress created a collection in Shiomi's name in the Asian American Pacific Islander Collection, which will also serve as a repository for the archives of Mu Performing Arts.