B·O·N·D International Virtual Performance Festival Announces 2021 Event, Global Chinese Voices

Boston-based Mandarin-English bilingual, bicultural theater company CHUANG Stage is co-producing this year's B·O·N·D International Virtual Performance Festival: Global Chinese Voices, supporting a cohort of Chinese descent theater-makers currently residing and working in New York, Toronto, Brussels, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Beijing; the cohort is commissioned to each creates a new, digital monodrama that collectively manifests the underrepresented voices and experience of the Chinese diaspora.

The inaugural B·O·N·D International Virtual Performance Festival in 2020 engaged over 250,000 audiences from across the world, with 25 selected performances carefully chosen and curated from a pool of global submissions. Projected for global live-stream premiere in June 2021, the cohort of theater-makers are given multitudes of artistic support and freedom towards bold statements in unprecedented moments for artists of Asian descent around the world.

Through bi-weekly meetings, workshops, curated artist conversations, and masterclasses, B·O·N·D rigorously supports this cohort with rehearsal spaces (in-person in Beijing), stipend, an administrative and marketing team, and a hybrid, open-to-all community engagement plan--alongside the curatorial process of new forms and new plays in the digital landscape, B·O·N·D Festival extends the online community into global cities with "B·O·N·D in Your City".

"B·O·N·D in Your City" is a series of artist-led, open-air play reading workshops that are free to the public in the geographic locations where the artists reside, inviting local residents to play with the methodologies and the text of the artists' choice. Prioritizing safety, some episodes of this city-based "traveling" series also take place virtually depending on local health official guidelines allowance.

The new B·O·N·D Festival: Global Chinese Voices in 2021 seeks to build communities upon solidarity, visibility, and continued imagination for new forms, mediums, and stories in the virtual performance world. Created and led by US-based Chinese women theater-makers, the festival is driven to uplift Asian and minority voices through curating and learning with our artists and audiences in the face of crises and the hopes for a brighter future.

For more information, please visit bondfest.org.

This program is supported in part by a grant from the Boston Cultural Council and administered by the Mayor's Office of Arts and Culture.