This fall, Tisch Drama is proud to welcome Mia Katigbak, co-founder and Artistic Producing Director of the National Asian American Theatre Company (NAATCO), as the curator of its annual Festival of Voices.
Presented each fall as part of the TISCH DRAMA STAGE season, the festival serves to highlight a diverse range of potent and underrepresented voices, aesthetics, and points of view.
According to Tisch Drama Chair Rubén Polendo, the festival’s core mission is to celebrate inclusion and belonging, and bring to light unique aesthetic, critical, and socio-political elements.
Inspired by that mission, Katigbak said she specifically sought out material from Asian and Asian American playwrights.
“It’s all about diversifying the kinds of works that students get exposed to,” she said. “Given the framework of the festival, I was very interested in highlighting Asian American playwrights in various stages of their careers—as opposed to those who have been produced regularly. In the service of Asian American theatre artists, we all resist a kind of formulaic category.”
Additionally, Katigbak invited Asian Americans and people of color to direct the festival’s productions—“in order to give the students as rich of an engagement as possible,” she noted.
This year’s festival includes new works Blood in Your Blood by A. Rey Pamatmat, directed by LA Williams; and The Late Wedding by Christopher Chen, directed by Giselle Ty.
Inspired by the writings of Italo Calvino, The Late Wedding is an imaginative portrait of a fractured marriage, as told through a series of interconnected fables, including an anthropological tour of fantastical tribes and their marital customs. Blood in Your Blood, told potently through troubled lovers, slippery time, and a lusty troll, highlights the impact of a family’s invisible and violent history on its relationships, both past and future.
There will also be two staged readings: Franklinland by Lloyd Suh and Legs by Leah Nanako Winkler.
Katigbak said she hopes audiences experience an “a-ha” moment.
“Hopefully, they’re going to see great actors onstage,” she said with a laugh, “but in terms of experiencing the festival as a whole, I hope they will have a moment [when they understand], there’s more to Asian American theatre than they thought”—a point Polendo also underscored.
“For nearly 30 years, Mia and NAATCO have established themselves as leaders in the conversation of equity and inclusion,” he said. “They have been pioneers in developing, curating, and producing theatre that advocates for Asian and Asian American voices and, as NAATCO has referenced, ‘demonstrating their vital contributions to the fabric of American culture.’”
The Festival of Voices runs Nov. 15–20 in the Abe Burrows Theater, located at 721 Broadway. The two staged readings will be held Nov. 17 at 2 p.m, also in the Burrows. GET TICKETS