| Ma-Yi Theater Company Announces 2024-2025 Season with Three Premieres | |
| Posted by: Official_Press_Release 01:02 pm EDT 08/06/24 | |
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| MA-YI THEATER COMPANY ANNOUNCES 2024-2025 SEASON Michi Barall's Drawing Lessons, Directed by Jack Tamburri, Oct 8 - Nov 10 Lisa Sanaye Dring's SUMO, Directed by Ralph B. Peña, Winter 2025 Shayok Misha Chowdhury's RHEOLOGY, April 22-May 17, 2025 The award-winning Ma-Yi Theater Company, one of the country's leading incubators of new work shaping the national discourse about what it means to be Asian American today, is proud to announce its 2024-2025 season, which features three premieres presented in partnership with leading theaters across the country. The season begins on October 8 in Minneapolis with the Children's Theatre World Premiere production of Drawing Lessons by Michi Barall. Experience the energy of a graphic novelist's imagination at work as you're drawn into this innovative story that magically takes place both on stage and on screen. Co-commissioned by Ma-Yi Theater Company and Children's Theatre Company, Drawing Lessons is directed by Jack Tamburri and runs through November 10 at the Children's Theatre Company Cargill Stage. Following the success of Mike Lew's Teenage Dick in 2018 and Lloyd Suh's The Chinese Lady in 2022, Ma-Yi Theater Company returns to The Public Theater with the New York Premiere of SUMO by Lisa Sanaye Dring, Ma-Yi's 2024 Tow Playwright in Residence. Entrenched in an elite sumo training facility in Tokyo, six men practice, eat, love, play, and ultimately fight. Slated for Winter 2025, Ma-Yi's Producing Artistic Director and Obie Award winner Ralph B. Peña directs this powerhouse drama. In a co-production with The Bushwick Starr and HERE, Ma-Yi Theater Company will present RHEOLOGY , the newest work by Obie Award-winning writer/director Shayok Misha Chowdhury, a 2024 Pulitzer Prize Finalist for his celebrated play, Public Obscenities. Running April 22-May 17, 2025 at The Bushwick Starr, RHEOLOGY is a performance memoir created and performed with his mother, the physicist Bulbul Chakraborty. In this production, an artist son studies his physicist mother while she studies the strange behavior of sand. Together, they try to understand the science and perform the story of how things flow. Ma-Yi's Producing Artistic Director Ralph B. Peña said, "Thanks in no small part to our incredible institutional partners across the country, Ma-Yi's 2024-2025 season promises to be one of our most ambitious and rewarding seasons since our founding 35 years ago. We are grateful and thrilled to be working with some of the most innovative theaters in the country, including Children's Theatre Company in Minneapolis and our neighbors The Public Theater, The Bushwick Starr, and HERE, to present three vibrant plays that expand the scope of Asian American storytelling on stage." Additional information on Ma-Yi's 2024-2025 season follows. Please visit www.ma-yitheatre.org for more information. MA-YI THEATER COMPANY'S 2024–2025 SEASON A Children's Theatre World Premiere Production Drawing Lessons By Michi Barall Original conception by Michi Barall and Jack Tamburri Directed by Jack Tamburri Co-commissioned by Ma-Yi Theater Company and Children's Theatre Company October 8-November 10, 2024 at Children's Theatre Company Cargill Stage (2400 3rd Avenue South Minneapolis) Experience the energy of a graphic novelist's imagination at work! Dynamic, jump-off-the-page drawings show Kate's manhwa graphic novel coming together, even as she deals with school, friends, and how her Korean heritage fits into her American lifestyle. Will her contentious friendship with Paul help or hinder her progress? Will either of them ever find their true artistic voices? Get drawn into this innovative story that magically takes place both on stage and on screen! Ma-Yi Theatre Company and The Public Theater Present New York Premiere of SUMO By Lisa Sanaye Dring A co-production of Ma-Yi Theater Company and La Jolla Playhouse Directed by Ralph B. Peña Winter 2025 Entrenched in an elite sumo training facility in Tokyo, six men practice, eat, love, play, and ultimately fight. Step into the sacred world of sumo wrestling, with the New York premiere of Lisa Sanaye Dring's mesmerizing new drama, SUMO . Akio arrives as an angry, ambitious 18-year-old with a lot to learn. Expecting validation, dominance, and fame, and desperate to move up the ranks, he slams headlong into his fellow wrestlers. With sponsorship money at stake, their bodies on the line, and their futures at risk, the wrestlers struggle to carve themselves—and one another—into the men they dream of being. SUMO is a thrilling new play set in an elite and rarely explored world. Obie Award winner Ralph B. Peña directs this powerhouse drama. The Bushwick Starr presents a co-production with HERE and Ma-Yi Theater Company RHEOLOGY Written and Directed by Shayok Misha Chowdhury in collaboration with Bulbul Chakraborty April 22-May 17, 2025 at The Bushwick Starr (419 Eldert Street, Brooklyn) Obie Award-winning writer/director Shayok Misha Chowdhury's recent play, Public Obscenities, is a Pulitzer Prize Finalist and was singled out as one of the best theater works of 2023 by The New Yorker. His newest work, RHEOLOGY , is a performance memoir created and performed with his mother, the physicist Bulbul Chakraborty. Chakraborty's specialty is the titular science of rheology, the laws governing the malleability and movement of matter under force. Another of her loves is the poetic songs of Bengali composer Rabindranath Tagore. These songs paint glorious pictures about the drama of nature: monsoons produce drum-like thunder claps, rivers let loose their long hair into waterfalls, music flows through generations. Chakraborty learned these songs from her foremothers, then passed them on to Misha. In this production, an artist son studies his physicist mother while she studies the strange behavior of sand. Together, they try to understand the science and perform the story of how things flow. About the Artists Michi Barall is a New York City-based actor, playwright and academic. As an actor, Michi has appeared in new plays by Julia Cho, Philip Kan Gotanda, A.R. Gurney, John Guare, Naomi Iizuka, Han Ong, Jose Rivera, Paul Rudnick, Charles Mee, Sarah Schulman, Anna Deavere Smith, Diana Son, Lloyd Suh, Regina Taylor, Doug Wright and Chay Yew, among others. Michi's dance-theatre piece, Rescue Me , was produced at the Ohio Theatre by Ma-Yi in 2010. Her adaptation of Peer Gynt, entitled Peer Gynt and The Norwegian Hapa Band, also produced by Ma-Yi, premiered in 2107, at the ART/NY Theatre. Recently, Michi co-wrote the short films Sophocles in Staten Island and its follow up Odets in Staten Island with Sung Rno, directed by Jack Tamburri. Her current project, Drawing Lessons, a commission through the Mellon Foundation's Generation Now program, will premiere this season at the Children's Theatre Company in Minneapolis. Michi holds degrees from Stanford University (AB), NYU (MFA, Grad Acting) and Columbia University (PhD,Theatre/English & Comparative Literature). Her academic work focuses on commercial theatre and spectacle entertainments, modern Asian and Asian American theatre, and disability theatres. She has taught at Columbia University, NYU and MIT. She is currently full-time faculty in Theatre and Performance at Purchase College in New York. Lisa Sanaye Dring is a writer and director from Hilo, Hawaii and Reno, Nevada. Her play SUMO was produced by La Jolla Playhouse and Ma-Yi Theater Company in 2023, and will be receiving its New York premiere at The Public Theater with Ma-Yi next year. Her play Kairos is currently receiving a Rolling World Premiere in three cities with National New Play Network. Lisa has won an Edgerton Award, a Broadway World Award for Best New Play, and the PLAY LA Stage Raw/Humanitas Prize. They have been a finalist for the Relentless Award, the O'Neill Playwrights' Conference (2x), the Seven Devils Playwrights Conference, and a 2x finalist (one honorable mention) for the Bay Area Playwrights Festival. Kaidan Project: Walls Grow Thin, a piece she co-wrote with Chelsea Sutton, was nominated for 7 Ovation Awards including Best Production (winner of 5). Lisa's work has also been developed/produced by The Geffen, The New Group, Actors Theatre of Louisville, East West Players, Circle X, SCF @ Son of Semele, Antaeus Theater Company, Playwrights' Arena, UCSB Launch Pad Series, CalArts and Skylight Theatre. They have worked with Meow Wolf and have been awarded fellowships at MacDowell, Blue Mountain Center and Yaddo. She was awarded the 2021 Dorothy and Granville Hicks Residency at Yaddo, which honors one promising young writer a year. She received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Interactive Programming for a piece she co-wrote and co-directed with Matt Hill called Welcome to the Blumhouse Live. Shayok Misha Chowdhury is an Obie and Whiting Award winning writer, director, and performer, born in India, based in Brooklyn. His playwriting debut Public Obscenities, one of three finalists for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize, was a New York Times Critic's Pick and hailed as "a literary marvel" in The New Yorker's Best Theatre of 2023. Misha directed the play's world premiere at Soho Rep, a co-production with NAATCO, as well as transfers to Woolly Mammoth and Theatre for a New Audience. He is the recipient of a Princess Grace Award, The Mark O'Donnell Prize, Drama Desk and Drama League nominations, a Jonathan Larson Grant, and the Relentless Award for his musical HOW THE WHITE GIRL GOT HER SPOTS AND OTHER 90s TRIVIA, created with composer Laura Grill Jaye. Misha is currently working on commissions from Playwrights Horizons and Manhattan Theatre Club and developing Rheology, a collaboration with his physicist mother, for which he was awarded an inaugural Sundance Asian American Fellowship. The concert-memoir, commissioned through HERE Arts Center, will premiere at The Bushwick Starr in 2025, with Ma-Yi Theatre Company. Other favorite collaborations include SPEECH (Philly Fringe) with Lightning Rod Special; Brother, Brother (New York Theatre Workshop) with Aleshea Harris; and MukhAgni (Under the Radar @ The Public Theater) with Kameron Neal. Misha was a soloist and collaborator on the Grammy-winning album Calling All Dawns . About Ma-Yi Theater Company Founded in 1989, Ma-Yi Theater Company is a professional Drama Desk, Lortel, and Obie Award-winning, Off- Broadway not-for-profit organization whose primary mission is to develop and produce new and innovative plays by Asian American writers. Its numerous acclaimed productions include Lloyd Suh's The Chinese Lady, Daniel K. Isaac's ONCE UPON A (korean) TIME, Hansol Jung's Wolf Play, and Lisa Sanaye Dring's SUMO . Other productions include Mike Lew's Teenage Dick and Bike America, Qui Nguyen's The Inexplicable Redemption of Agent G and Soul Samurai (with Vampire Cowboys), Rescue Me by Michi Barall, and Lonnie Carter's The Romance of Magno Rubio. The Ma-Yi Writers Lab, a signature program founded in 2004, is the largest resident company of Asian-American playwrights ever assembled. The Lab emboldens a new generation of Asian American artists to voice their experiences, while developing a steady stream of quality new works by Asian American playwrights for Ma-Yi's own performing repertory. New works developed at the Writers Lab have gone on to successful productions around the country, at such theaters as Victory Gardens, Laguna Playhouse, Long Wharf Theater, Woolly Mammoth and the Actors Theater of Louisville, to name a few. Ma-Yi's productions have earned multiple Obie Awards, Henry Hewes Award nominations, Lucille Lortel Awards, Drama Desk nominations, and the Special Drama Desk Award for "more than two decades of excellence and for nurturing Asian-American voices in stylistically varied and engaging theater." Ma-Yi Theater is under the leadership of Producing Artistic Director Ralph B. Peña, and Executive Producer Jakob Carter |
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