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Mu Tang Clan

Designed by Theater Mu’s Mellon Foundation Playwright-In-Residence Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay, the Mu Tang Clan is a playwrights incubator program for emerging and experienced Asian American playwrights. Convening virtually over 14-sessions, five playwrights (in addition to Saymoukda) will be in a peer-to-peer learning model as they write, share, and discuss topics related to the field and the influences that impact their work. Playwrights will participate in public presentations in August 2021 and January 2022. Audiences will get to know six new plays as the program will culminate in a public reading of scenes from each playwrights’ script-in-progress.

The incubator is urgent for Asian American playwrights because it’s an intentional program that offers:

• A safer space for Asian American playwrights to be bold, vulnerable, and supported.

• A model that is participant-designed.

• Focused time to write and workshop pages.

• A public, professional staged virtual reading of their work-in-progress.

• Visibility and artistic autonomy.

• $1,000 stipend to help each playwright secure reading materials, software, childcare, snacks, meals, stronger wifi, etc.

This program is made possible through a generous grant from the Science Museum of Minnesota’s 2021 Race Exhibition Mini Grants and through the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

MEET THE COHORT

SAYMOUKDA DUANGPHOUXAY VONGSAY (Saint Paul, MN) is an award-winning Lao American poet, playwright, public artist, and cultural producer. She’s a recipient of a Sally Award for Initiative from the Ordway Center for Performing Arts which “recognizes bold new steps and strategic leadership undertaken by an individual...in creating projects or artistic programs never before seen in Minnesota that will have a significant impact on strengthening Minnesota’s artistic/cultural community.” She’s the author of the children’s book When Everything Was Everything and is best known for her award-winning play Kung Fu Zombies Vs. Cannibals. She's currently the Mellon Foundation Playwright-in-Residence at Theater Mu, a 2022 Bush Foundation fellow, a McKnight Foundation Fellow in Community Engaged Practice Art, a Jerome Hill Artist Fellow in Playwriting, a Minnesota State Arts Board and Forecast Public Art grantee, and serves as a member at large on the City of Saint Paul Cultural STAR Board. | @refugenius  

MARLINA GONZALEZ (Minneapolis, MN) is a multi-disciplinary arts, theater & media curator, writer, and producer who has created numerous international film festivals, multidisciplinary art exhibits, and performances for the Walker Art Center, the former Intermedia Arts, Pangea World Theater, University of Minnesota Katherine E. Nash Gallery, to name a few. In 2012, through the Joyce Foundation Award in Theater, Marlina wrote Isla Tuliro (Island of Confusion), an allegorical play commissioned by Pangea World Theater and Teatro Del Pueblo. In 2018, she conceived a multi-media performance entitled Stop. Look. Listen. for Pangea’s Lake Street Story Circles in partnership with Latinx spoken word artist Trey Porter, Hmong American playwright Sunny Thao, and Japanese American SAORI weaver Chiaki O’Brien. With grant support from Coalition of Asian American Leaders SPARK Leadership Grant and Filipinx For Immigrant Rights and Racial Justice in MN, Marlina is producing Kuwentuhan, a blingual storytelling podcast with former KFAI radio producer Ramon Hough.

“We are indigenous to a place and sojourners to another. In our movements through space and time, our lives have touched, clashed, converged, but are forever moving in parallels. I want to find convergence from points of divergence.”

KEIKO GREEN (La Jolla, CA) is a playwright, screenwriter, performer, MFA Playwriting student at UCSD, and Core Company Member at ACT Theatre in Seattle. Her plays have been developed and/or produced by ACT Theatre, the Kennedy Center, National New Play Network, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Cygnet Theatre, Playwrights Realm, and Actors Express. Her play Exotic Deadly: or the MSG Play will be developed this summer at the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, and her play Hometown Boy will receive its world premiere this fall at Actors Express in Atlanta. As an actor, Keiko has performed at the Denver Center of Performing Arts, Seattle Repertory Theatre, ACT Theatre, and the National Asian American Theatre Company among others. Instagram and Facebook: @captbaka | Twitter: @keikogreen

KATHRYN HADDAD (Minneapolis, MN) is a writer, teacher, speaker, and community organizer whose work explores contemporary SWANA (Southwest Asian/North African) experiences. Kathryn is a 2004/05 recipient of the Archibald Bush Leadership Fellowship. As a writer, she received three Playwright’s Center Many Voices Fellowships as well as awards from the Jerome Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board, and Intermedia Arts. She was the recipient of the 2018 Kay Sexton Award from the Minnesota Book Awards for her work with the SWANA Community. She was a 2019/20 Jerome Fellow in Playwriting. Her plays and creative non-fiction have appeared in many venues throughout the United States. Her play, Zafira and the Resistance recently had a three-week run at the Guthrie’s Dowling Studio in November of 2019. Her play, Zafira the Olive Oil Warrior appears in the anthology, Contemporary Plays by Women of Color, edited by Roberta Uno, 2018, and she has an upcoming essay in the anthology, We Are Meant to Rise: Voices for Justice from Minneapolis to the World edited by Carolyn Holbrook and David Mura, University of Minnesota Press, 2021. Kathryn has worked extensively with Pangea World Theater throughout the years as an artist, commissioned playwright, and collaborator. She cofounded Mizna—one of the few SWANA arts and literary organizations in the United States where she served as its Artistic and Executive Director for twelve years. She is the current artistic and executive director of New Arab American Theater Works and teaches high school in Bloomington, Minnesota.

ALEX LIN (Saddle River, NJ) is an award-nominated playwright, screenwriter, and journalist. Her plays have been read and workshopped from coast to coast with Magic Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Spooky Action, Alleyway Theatre, The COOP, and Central Square Theater. At Supercluster, the frontline space media agency founded by A24 Films and GrandArmy, she's collaborated with NASA, SpaceX, Netflix, and Apple TV+ to bridge the gap between scientific discovery and pop culture. She unfortunately cannot stop performing and has pretended (?) to be someone else at Actors Theatre of Louisville, Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, and Commonwealth Shakespeare Company. Honors: Lanford Wilson New American Play Festival, Semifinalist; Ashland New Plays Festival, Pass the Pen Nominee. Instagram: @hemeiling | Twitter: @alexandralin

LIQING XU (Brooklyn, NY) is a playwright and filmmaker who is passionate about uncovering the intersection of power and identity. Their Yellow Trilogy includes Yellow Fever (premiered internationally in Shanghai, China to sold-out audiences), Yellow Dream$ (Zarkower Award for Playwriting, PWC Core Apprentice Finalist), and Yellow Mirrors. In their former life, they were a creative executive for DreamWorks China, where they developed the animated movies Abominable and Over the Moon. Other honors include the Kyoto Filmmakers Lab and the Adrienne Shelly Foundation Scholarship for female directors. They received their BFA in Film and Television from NYU Tisch, and are a graduate of Hunter College’s MFA playwriting program. Instagram @soozxu | New Play Exchange. Rep: Scott Halle at Gramercy Park Entertainment.

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