Cindy Im in THE HUNDRED FLOWERS PROJECT at Crowded Fire / Directed by Desdemona Chiang / Photo by Pak Han
AULIS: AN ACT OF NIHILISM IN ONE LONG ACT
3f, 6m
An absurdist take on Iphigenia at Aulis, set in a realm of lost childhood. A restless army entertains itself with video games and sitcoms, while waiting for the wind that would carry their ships to war. In this existential space of paralyzing doubt, indecision, and anticlimax, a march toward unstoppable violence grows inevitable.
CAUGHT
2f, 2m
An art gallery hosts a retrospective of the work of a legendary Chinese dissident artist who was imprisoned in a Chinese detention center for a single work of art. Recently profiled in The New Yorker, the artist himself is present, and shares with patrons the details of an ordeal that defies belief. A labyrinthine exploration of truth, art, social justice and cultural appropriation, where nothing is as it first appears.
THE HEADLANDS
4m, 3f
Henry, an amateur sleuth and true crime aficionado, sets out to solve the ultimate case: the unsolved murder of his father. Using his memories and the family stories he was told as an Asian American child growing up in San Francisco, Henry begins an investigation through a labyrinth of secrets and deceptions that leads him to question those closest to him.
HOME INVASION
2f, 1m
A detective investigates a baffling murder in this mystical sci-fi noir designed to be performed in actual private living rooms.
THE HUNDRED FLOWERS PROJECT
3f, 3m
During rehearsals for a play about Mao Tse-Tung, events from the actors’ real lives become the subject of their own epic propaganda play. The Hundred Flowers Project, a story of self-generating narratives, is at once a cautionary tale of history and a parable of media’s role in the politics of today.
INTO THE NUMBERS
(available in Russian, Chinese, Spanish)
2f, 3m
In 2004, Iris Chang, famed author of The Rape of Nanking, a chronicle of one of the worst atrocities of the 20th Century, committed suicide at the age of 36. Structured as an interview gone awry, Into the Numbers explores the philosophical and psychological implications of researching genocide, as well as the toll media saturation plays in the process. What begins as a standard lecture and interview soon descends into a surreal nightmare. Ghosts from Chang’s research appear and characters shift personas, as the celebrated author tries desperately to find order in the midst of mental chaos.
THE LATE WEDDING
3-16 actors: gender, ethnicity variable
Inspired by the writings of Italo Calvino, a fractured portrait of a fractured marriage, as told through a series of interconnected fables, including an anthropological tour of fantastical tribes and their marital customs.
MUTT
3f, 3m
The Republican Party finally realizes it has a problem with race, so it decides its best chance for success in the 2016 presidential election is to back a candidate who is a mixture of every race on earth. A wild and surreal sketch-comedy-infused satire that skewers all political parties and burns down the entire racial house of cards.
PASSAGE
5-12 actors: gender, ethnicity variable
A fantasia inspired by E.M. Forster on perception and power in the encounter between two imaginary countries that are just that-- imagined-- by their own citizens and by citizens of the other country.
THE WINDOW AGE
1f, 2m
1920′s, England in the aftermath of World War 1. The conception of the human mind is being reframed by the Modernist Movement in art and literature, the burgeoning field of psychoanalysis, and the emergence of a strange new affliction termed War Neurosis (“shell shock”). A Modernist writer, not unlike Virginia Woolf, and her troubled war veteran husband receive a visit from an old friend, a psychoanalyst not unlike Sigmund Freud. Over the course of the play, the single drawing room scene they share is replayed three times, each from a different perspective of the unconscious. Each replay takes us further down into a kaleidoscopic inner universe, where windows upon windows reveal hidden fears, desires, and doubts about the the very nature of reality.
YOU MEAN TO DO ME HARM
2f, 2m
An innocuous comment at a dinner of two interracial couples leads to a surreal escalation of cold war style paranoia. A psychological exploration of Chinese and American foreign relations, and of the personal relations we hold most dear.