Brenda Wong Aoki Selected As Recipient Of Hewlett 50 Arts Commission For New Works In Theater And Spoken Word

Award-winning storyteller, playwright, and Bay Area local Brenda Wong Aoki is pleased to announce that she has been selected as a recipient of a Hewlett 50 Arts Commission, a program of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to commission new works by world-class artists. Wong Aoki, in collaboration with the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM), is among a stellar group of 10 Bay Area based non-profit organizations that will receive $150,000 to create important and unique work that facilitates discussions around the most pressing local issues happening in our country.

J-town, Chinatown: Our Town, (Working Title) will be a multidisciplinary and multimedia work written & performed by Wong Aoki and scored by award-winning jazz musician Mark Izu, using contemporary Western as well as traditional Chinese and Japanese instruments. The performance will capture the histories of the nation's first Chinatown and Japantown of San Francisco, interweaving Aoki's mixed-race family stories. True stories about people and places from her life and that of her Chinese and Japanese American family's 122 -year history in San Francisco.

"My family has roots in Chinatown and Japantown going back 121 years," said Wong Aoki. "Only I could tell this story, it's a transmission of hard-earned life lessons. Why it matters is because knowing your history, you can change your future. I've learned in my 42 years of storytelling that the painfully personal is the most universal. Everyone cares about home, family, at its core, this is a love letter to San Francisco."

Over the course of her career, Wong Aoki has developed a form of monodrama based in elements of Nohgaku, a traditional form of Japanese theater, combined with contemporary aesthetics and informed by personal perspectives on current events and everyday life. Inspired by the story of her son, a mixed-race young man raised in San Francisco, Wong Aoki will weave together narrative, film, live music with Chinese and Japanese instruments, contemporary dance, and elements of neo-benshi (live alternate voice-overs for silent movies), with other media to examine a young man's familial connection to the city of San Francisco as it undergoes a period of rapid, dislocating economic change and rampant inequality. J-town, Chinatown: Our Town, which will draw on interviews with the artist's aging relatives and CAAM's Memories to Light collection of home movies from Japanese and Chinese American families, will premiere at the Herbst Theater as part of CAAM Fest in 2021.

As a playwright, this is the first time Wong Aoki will pull all parts of her bloodlines into one story which, as the piece is toured, will help spread understanding of the new multiracial America. The seismic shifts taking place in Japantown and Chinatown compel artists to not only digitally capture people and places before they are gone but to support the communities while they are under attack, even as new works of art are made. J-town, Chinatown: Our Town will preserve history by researching and gathering oral histories from elders and transform the community by premiering a new work of art deeply rooted in the voice of the people whose stories are being told.

Says Wong Aoki, "This piece is about identity and homeland in an increasingly multiracial America, especially in cities where historic cultural districts like Chinatown and J-town are being dismantled, or no one from the culture lives there anymore. Where do people who are uprooted from their culture fit into identity politics? Where do mixed race people fit in? Ultimately, the play is about belonging...in a complex, interconnected, chaotic world.'

She continues, "I am Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, Scottish and one of the first playwrights in the country to write about the multiracial experience. As the changing demographics of our country grow increasingly multiracial, ultimately, I am writing an American story. "

Launched in 2017 to celebrate the foundation's 50th anniversary, the Hewlett 50 Arts Commissions is a five-year, $8 million initiative supporting the creation and premiere of 50 new works by world-class performing artists working in five disciplines. The largest commissioning initiative of its kind in the country, the program is a symbol of the Hewlett Foundation's longstanding commitment to sustaining artistic expression and encouraging public engagement in the arts across diverse communities in the San Francisco Bay Area. The 10 awardees in New Works for Theater & Spoken Word include: California Shakespeare Theater & Marcus Gardley, CAAM & Brenda Wong Aoki, Destiny Arts Center and Marc Bamuthi Joseph, The Imaginists and Arpad Schilling, Kitka & Karmina Silec, Magic Theater & Taylor Mac, PolicyLink & Michael Moore, Stanford Live & Weyni Mengesha, Teatro Vision & Salomon Santiago, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts & Rafael Casal.

More information about the Hewlett 50 Arts Commission can be found at: hewlett.org/50Commissions

ABOUT BRENDA WONG AOKI

Brenda Wong Aoki is a storyteller, anthologized playwright, producer, artistic director, and performer. Her song/dance/dramas are drawn from her family's 121-year history in San Francisco and the Bay Area, Kabuki legends, ghost stories, and her personal experience. Known for her agility across disciplines, she creates monodramas rooted in traditional storytelling, dance movement, and music. For more information please visit www.brendawongaoki.com

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