MAY 2027
EWP’S NEW WORKS FESTIVAL
A bi-annual festival of new theatrical work
In May 2027 EWP will present the NEW WORKS FESTIVAL, a new bi-annual festival of new theatrical work that will bring the Los Angeles community to the heart of Little Tokyo and champion the plays and musicals that will shape the future of the Asian American canon.
Among the projects curated for the inaugural festival will be Redpoint My Heart by Amanda L. Andrei, the recipient of the Open Call Commission for a new sports play, which will have its world premiere at EWP alongside the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Andrei’s play, REDPOINT MY HEART, is a romantic comedy about a community of Asian American rock climbers who support and compete with themselves and one another–and, just maybe, find ways to come together along the way.
Additional presentations will include a concert reading of Chinese Canadian musical theatre composer and lyricist Kevin Y. Wong’s queer, genre-bending musical SOFT MAGICAL TOFU BOYS and a new play presented in collaboration with Baltimore Center Stage and Breaking The Binary. SOFT MAGICAL TOFU BOYS utilizes a distinct and heartfelt pop sound to tell the story of three brothers who have a unique (and seemingly useless) magical power: they can make drawings in the air come to life. SOFT MAGICAL TOFU BOYS received previous development through the O’Neill Center’s National Musical Theatre Conference and the National Alliance for Music Theatre (NAMT)’s Festival of New Musicals. This presentation will mark Wong’s west coast debut.
East West Players will also take part in Cohort 2 of Baltimore Center Stage and Breaking the Binary’s Trans History Project. Over the next two years, EWP will support the development of a new play or musical by an Asian American, Pacific Islander, or Native Hawai’ian trans or gender non-conforming writer telling a story that illuminates the history of gender non-conforming individuals or culture before our time. The process of selecting the writer to be in residence is still in progress.“Every play and musical that we think of today as ‘canonical’ was once a new work that needed artists and audiences to take a chance on it. We’re hopeful that this New Works Festival will grow to be a gathering space where artistic projects can take a meaningful leap forward in their development while connecting with those in our community who are most excited to expand their horizons for what Asian American theatre can be.”
Amanda L. Andrei is a playwright, literary translator, and theater critic/journalist residing in Los Angeles by way of Virginia/Washington DC. She writes epic, irreverent plays that center the concealed, wounded places of history from the perspectives of diasporic Filipina women, and she co-translates from Romanian to English with her father. Her play Mama, I wish I were silver won the 2022 Jane Chambers Award for Feminist Playwriting. Her plays have been produced by Relative Theatrics and developed with Boston Court, La MaMa, Echo Theatre, Artists at Play, Circle X, and more, as well as received finalist status with the Princess Grace Award, Eugene O’Neill Conference, Playwrights Realm, and Ashland Festival. Her articles appear in the L.A. Times, American Theatre Magazine, Stage Raw, Howl Round, Rappler, 3Views, and more, and her translations in Asymptote Journal, Another Chicago Magazine, and Lunch Ticket. She is a Theatre Communications Group Rising Leaders of Color (2023). MFA: University of Southern California. www.amandalandrei.com
Kevin Wong is a composer-lyricist, singer/musician, and dramaturg. His musicals include: Recurring John: A Song Cycle; STAR!(ving): A Collection of Songs; Polly Peel (with Julie Tepperman); Out of Stock; Drama 101 (with Steven Gallagher); In Real Life (with Nick Green); Believers (with Ali Joy Richardson), Take Me Back (with Amir Haidar); and Soft Magical Tofu Boys. Kevin streams online concerts weekly on the streaming service Twitch (twitch.tv/kevinywong). He is a member of the vocal group Asian Riffing Trio (with Chris Tsujiuchi and Colin Asuncion), is currently part-time faculty at Sheridan College, and is a three-time winner of the Playwrights Guild of Canada’s Tom Hendry Dan School of Drama & Music Award for New Musical. As of 2023, he is the Creative Lead on the Musical Stage Company’s UnCovered concert series. Most recently, he can be heard on his albums Small Ways to Move and Covers (available on streaming services everywhere).
The Trans History Project is a revolutionary national initiative created by Bo Frazier, Baltimore Center Stage’s Artist-in-Residence. Led by Baltimore Center Stage and Breaking the Binary Theatre, this project aims to commission, develop, and publish 10 new plays about the real history of gender non-conformity which has existed across all cultures since the beginning of time. There will be 10 Trans and Gender Nonconforming playwrights (TGNC) commissioned by BCS who will subsequently be placed into 2-year development residencies at theaters across the country in 2 cohorts.
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