NAATCO's Production of Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter Closes 11/6

The OBIE Award-winning NAATCO, The National Asian American Theater Company, is kicking off their 22nd season with Harold Pinter's The Dumb Waiter. Andrew Pang directs a cast that includes Louis Ozawa Changchien (Crane Story, Year Zero, NAATCO's Leah's Train; Film: "Predators,") and Stephen Park (Ivanov. NAATCO; Keith Reddin's The New Paradigm, Atlantic Theater). This Off-Broadway limited engagement at The Duo Theater (62 East Fourth Street, between 2nd and 3rd Avenues) continues through November 6th only.

Two men wait in a basement for their next assignment. As the tension mounts, a dumb waiter descends with inexplicable food orders, adding to the men's anxieties. An envelope is slipped under the door and the play ends with the explosive revelation of the assignment's target.

A short Pinter piece will precede each performance, performed by special guest stars. The ‘curtain raisers' will include some of Pinter's best short works, among them: Trouble in the Works, The Black and White, Request Stop, Last to Go, Special Offer, Night, That's Your Trouble, That's All, and Dialogue for Three, performed by Cindy Cheung, Jackie Chung, Joel de la Fuente, Andrew Eisenman, Jennifer Ikeda, Peter Kim, Sue Jean Kim, C. S. Lee, Ken Leung, Orville Mendoza, Alfredo Narciso, Nicky Paraiso, Kelly Coffield Park, Debargo Sanyal, Jon Norman Schneider, Ching Valdes-Aran, Tiffany Villarin, Virginia Wing, and James Yaegashi, among others.

Louis Ozawa Changchien was last seen Off-Broadway in Crane Story (Playwrights Realm). Films: Predators, Fair Game, Gigantic, American Falls, Lefty Loosey Righty Tighty, Pretty to Think So, Indelible, and Robot Stories. Theater: Bike Wreck (EST), Leah's Train (NAATCO), Hamlet (Trinity Rep), Eurydice (Williamstown Theater Festival). Upcoming: Maple and Vine (Playwrights Horizons). TV: "Law and Order," "3LBS," the HBO pilot "The Miraculous Year" (dir. Kathryn Bigelow), and the BBC mini-series Heroes & Villains: Shogun. Ensemble member of Partial Comfort Productions and the Actors Center Workshop. MFA, Brown University.

Stephen Park's last appearance with NAATCO was in Ivanov. He recently appeared in Keith Reddin's The New Paradigm at the Atlantic Theater. Also, Paternity by Winter Miller at the Cherry Lane and Aunt Dan and Lemon by Wallace Shawn for The New Group. Stephen just finished working on two independent films: The Brass Teapot directed by Ramaa Mosley, and Putzel directed by Jason Chaet, as well Phil Spector, a biopic written and directed by David Mamet for HBO, starring Al Pacino and Helen Mirren. He can be seen in the soon-to-be-released Wedding Palace, a Korean/Korean-American romantic comedy directed by Christine Yoo, and The Best and the Brightest directed by Joshua Shelov. Other films include State of Play, Morning Glory, Rocket Science, A Serious Man, Fargo, Falling Down, Do the Right Thing. TV credits include "White Collar," "The Unusuals," "Law & Order," "Law & Order: Criminal Intent," "The Venture Bros.," "Mad About You," and he was a series regular on "In Living Color." Member: The Actors Center Workshop Company

Harold Pinter, playwright, director, actor, poet and political activist, was born in London in 1930. He lived with Antonia Fraser from 1975 until his death on Christmas Eve 2008. (They were married in 1980). He wrote twenty-nine plays including The Birthday Party, The Caretaker, The Homecoming, and Betrayal, twenty-one screenplays including The Servant, The Go-Between and The French Lieutenant's Woman, and directed twenty-seven theatre productions, including James Joyce's Exiles, David Mamet's Oleanna, seven plays by Simon Gray and many of his own plays including his last, Celebration, paired with his first, The Room at The Almeida Theatre, London in the spring of 2000. In 2005, Harold Pinter was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, the highest honour available to any writer in the world. In announcing the award, Horace Engdahl, Chairman of the Swedish Academy, said that Pinter was an artist "who in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms". In 2002, Pinter was made a Companion of Honour by the Queen for services to Literature. He was also awarded the Shakespeare Prize (Hamburg), the European Prize for Literature (Vienna), the Pirandello Prize (Palermo), the David Cohen British Literature Prize, the Laurence Olivier Award, the Legion d'Honneur and the Moliere D'Honneur for lifetime achievement. In 1999 he was made a Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature. He received honorary degrees from eighteen universities. www.haroldpinter.org.

Andrew Pang is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama and has been a professional actor in New York for over 15 years. In New York he has performed on Broadway as well as with NAATCO, Ma-Yi and Pan Asian Repertory. He has also appeared regionally throughout the U.S. - including the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago in productions of Kafka on the Shore and after the quake. Some of his selected film and television credits include - The Corruptor, Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Good Wife. In 2010, he directed the short film Works of Art which appeared in 17 festivals across North America and received 3 festival awards. In addition to his work as an actor/director, Andy is also a member of the Motion Picture Editor's Guild and is currently an assistant editor for the TV show Damages.

The Dumb Waiter features the original music of Minq Vaadka. The Dumb Waiter has scenic design by Joseph M. Gourley, costume design by Olivera Gajic, lighting design by Stephen Petrilli, and sound design by Adam Cochran.

The National Asian American Theatre Co., Inc. (NAATCO) was founded in 1989 to assert the presence and significance of Asian American theatre in the United States, demonstrating its vital contributions to the fabric of American culture, offering European and American classics as written with all Asian American casts; adaptations of these classics by Asian American Playwrights; and new plays - preferably world premieres - written by non-Asian Americans, not for or about Asian Americans, but realized by an all Asian American cast. NAATCO puts into service its total commitment to Asian American theatre artists to more accurately represent onstage the multi- and inter-cultural dynamics of our society. By doing so, they demonstrate a rich tapestry of cultural difference bound by the American experience. The enrichment accrues to each different culture as well as to America as a whole. NAATCO performs this chosen repertory as written, with no forced Asian cultural associations. The repertory's importance comes not only through the valuable training it provides for theatrical craft, but also from its ability to reach across ethnic boundaries to illuminate abiding characteristics of human nature. The superimposition of Asian faces on a non-Asian repertory, interpreted by artists using diverse and truly universal references to serve the text very faithfully, reflects and emphasizes the kinship among disparate cultures. "We do not say we are all the same, we say that we have quite large areas of understanding. We also say that affirmations of timeless values and new insights about old works can come from unexpected faces."

NAATCO was the recipient of the 2006 Rosetta LeNoire Award from Actors' Equity Association in recognition of its contribution toward increasing diversity and non-traditional casting in American theatre.

The Dumb Waiter is made possible, in part, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Performances at Duo Theatre (62 East Fourth Street, between 2nd and 3rd Avenues) are Thursday through Saturday evenings at 8:00pm, with matinees Sundays at 2:00pm; special added performance Wednesday evenings November 2nd at 8:00pm.

Tickets are $25 for regular performances. To purchase tickets or for more information, visit www.naatco.org or call (212) 868-4444.