China Doll - Digital Program
CREATIVE TEAM
Director/Performer
Production & Stream Designer
Songwriter
MONICA HO
CARLOS ACEVES
MIN KAHNG
SYNOPSIS
China Doll, a sensual fantasia written by award-winning playwright Elizabeth Wong and performed by Monica Ho, tells the story of a Chinatown girl who dreams about making it big in Hollywood. In this 35-minute performance, Anna May is an established movie star of numerous films. Hoping for what might be a career-defining role, she excitedly meets with movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn, sure he'll offer her the role of a lifetime. He makes an offer, but it's not what she expected.
BIOS
ELIZABETH WONG
Elizabeth is a Los Angeles-based playwright and theatrical director acclaimed for her unique blend of comedy and social justice issues. Among her many awards, the Tanne Foundation Grant for artistic achievement. Her award-winning plays include: Kimchee & Chitlins, Letters to a Student Revolutionary, and Dating & Mating in Modern Times, and Code of Conduct. Recent commissions include stage adaptations of The World’s Strongest Librarian (winner of the 2017 Distinguished Play Award) and Does My Head Look Big In This. East/West Players commissioned Ms. Wong to write a TYA touring play about student activist Tam Tran whose testimony before Congress helped inspire the executive order known as DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). Ms. Wong was a Disney Writing Fellow, a Los Angeles Times Op-Ed regular columnist, and staff writer for the ABC sitcom All-American Girl starring Margaret Cho. Currently, she teaches at Boston Conservatory at Berklee; she holds an MFA from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Her memberships include: PEN, Dramatist Guild, and Writers Guild West. She is currently working on a play about this country’s first woman cabinet member Frances Perkins, secretary of labor under FDR. www.elizabethwong.net
MONICA HO
she/her. Monica is excited to have her work presented by Theater Mu. She currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and is a recent graduate of the American Conservatory Theatre MFA program, class of 2020. Regional credits include Top Girls (American Conservatory Theater); The Good Person of Szechuan (California Shakespeare Theater); Noises Off (SF Playhouse); The Taming (Marin Shakespeare Company); Crane (Ferocious Lotus Theater Company); Shiner (FaultLine Theater). Monica is the winner of the 2016 San Francisco Bay Area Critics Circle Award for Best Actress for her work in In Love and Warcraft (Custom Made Theater). @1monicaho
MIN KAHNG
Min is an award-winning Bay Area playwright and composer whose works include The Four Immigrants: An American Musical Manga (Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award, Theatre Bay Area Award, Edgerton New Play Award, NAMT Production Grant), GOLD: The Midas Musical (Theatre Bay Area Award), Inside Out & Back Again, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon: A Musical Adaptation, Bad Kitty On Stage!, The Song of the Nightingale and Tales of Olympus. Kahng also wrote the NEA-funded project Story Explorers, an original musical for young audiences with autism. Kahng is an alumnus of the Playwrights Foundation’s Residency, Djerassi, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts Residency, Berkeley Rep’s Ground Floor, and the TheatreWorks New Works Festival. He has been invited as a Guest Lecturer/Artist at Harvard University, Stanford University, UC Berkeley, San Jose State University and The San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Kahng is a Jonathan Larson Grant Finalist, a Richard Rodgers Award Finalist, a Board Member of Theatre for Young Audiences USA, and a proud member of the Dramatists Guild. www.minkahng.com
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Special thanks to Lily Harris, Ash J Hicks, Peter Kuo, Kenneth Lee, NCTC, Emily Sullivan, and Lily Tung Crystal.
SPONSOR
China Doll is made possible, in part, thanks to a grant from the Chinese Heritage Foundation of The Minneapolis Foundation.