Wit Chitrapongse posted on July 14, 2009 13:42
The season begins with local playwright Lauren Yee’s irreverent new comedy Ching Chong Chinaman. The ultra-assimilated Wong family is as Chinese American as apple pie: teenager Upton dreams of World of Warcraft superstardom; his sister Desi dreams of early admission to Princeton. Unfortunately, Upton’s chores and homework get in the way of his 24/7 videogaming, and Desi’s math grades don’t fit the Asian American stereotype. Then Upton comes up with a novel solution for both problems: he acquires a Chinese indentured servant, who harbors an American dream of his own. Skewering every cliché about Asian American identity, CCC won the 2007 Yale Playwrights Festival and is racking up rave after rave—see below.
CCC represents Impact’s drive to find talented local emerging playwrights; the play was presented as part of the company’s staged reading series earlier this year. Yee, a Bay Area native who graduated from Yale in 2007, is the founder and executive director of the San Francisco Young Playwrights Festival. An accomplished young artist, Yee has received PlayGround’s June Anne Baker prize, a Theatre Bay Area CA$H grant, and fellowships with the Byrdcliffe Artist Colony, the New York Mills Art Retreat, and the Edward F. Albee Foundation.
Featuring Cindy Im, Lisa Kang, Arthur Keng, Sung Min Park, Pearl Wong, and Dennis Yen (returning to the Impact stage for the first time since he played the Narrator in the first three episodes of Money & Run).
http://srtp.org/productions/stagedreadings.html
