CHUANG Stage, Pao Arts Center, And Asian American Theatre Artists Of Boston Announces New Bilingual Radio Play

CHUANG Stage in collaboration with Pao Arts Center and Asian American Theatre Artists of Boston (AATAB) announces A Ghost of Keelung, presenting on Saturday, June 25, 2022, at 6 p.m. at Mary Soo Hoo Park on the Rose Kennedy Greenway.

Written by Jamie Lin and directed by Audrey Seraphin, The Ghost of Keelung is a bilingual radio play in English and Mandarin with live foley sound effects. The show takes audiences on a time-traversing auditory adventure of ancestral love, mistakes, and revenge, hidden in the coastal memories of 1960s Taiwan.

Radio plays traditionally rely solely on sound to bring their stories and characters to life. This performance will be a unique radio play presentation where audiences will witness the actions of the actors, sound engineers, and foley artists in real time as their performances bring the play to life.

The event is a special collaboration with the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy and Pao Arts Center as a part of the Summer 2022 outdoor VISIONS/VOICES performance series, activating artist Cheryl Wing-Zi Wong's YEAR OF THE TIGER installation in Mary Soo Hoo Park. The VISIONS/VOICES series celebrates the cultural power that flows through the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities across the Asian diaspora in ways that vocalize both struggles and joys.

"As a Taiwanese-American, I relate deeply to the blending of cultures and multilingualism experienced by our Taiwanese characters," said Jamie Lin. "The relationship between Mei Hua (the show's protagonist) and her fellow Taiwanese is a reflection of the way Black, Indigenous, and people of color, especially Asians, have learned to repress parts of themselves in order to survive in majority-white spaces."

The show is also a part of Found in Translation series-a multilingual play reading and community workshop series produced for Boston, in collaboration with Pao Arts Center and Asian American Theatre Artists of Boston (AATAB). Found in Translation aims to amplify the power and complexities of being multilingual, immigrants, or identifying as AAPI in the Greater Boston area, connecting the AAPI community through artistic conversations about race, language, and identity.

"A lot is going on in the AAPI Arts and Culture scene in Boston-it is just that the word cannot spread outside of Chinatown or our AAPI artist community as easily for a variety of reasons," said Sarah Shin, Co-Founder and Lead Producer of AATAB. "I hope that our visibility and inclusion are recognized as a necessity in Boston and that all of the different communities can support, uplift, and invite each other to our spaces to share and celebrate each other."

CHUANG Stage's mission is to cultivate joyful and challenging AAPI stories that create change in the world. The Ghost of Keelung is one of the steps in CHUANG Stage's endeavor to exemplify AAPI narratives and theater talents in the Greater Boston area. CHUANG Stage envisions a future in the American theatre moved forward by theater artists and audiences of Asian descent, through producing new works that contribute to language and spatial justice, equity and accessibility, global perspectives, anti-racist practices, immigrant visibility, and care for the community.

"We are extremely grateful for local talents like Jamie Lin and Audrey Seraphin joining us to celebrate stories and voices native to Boston," said Alison Yueming Qu, Co-Founder and Executive Director of CHUANG Stage. "Boston's Taiwanese American community is vibrant in Chinatown and crucial to our city's development. In presenting The Ghost of Keelung, we hope to uplift this community's rich history and language heritage."

This project is made possible in part by the Live Arts Boston grant from The Boston Foundation, and the Boston Cultural Council/Reopen Creative Boston grant from the Mayor's Office of Arts and Culture.

Tickets are free with a suggested donation of $10. For registration and more information, visit www.chuangstage.org or contact hello@chuangstage.org.

Founded in 2018, CHUANG Stage is the first Mandarin-English bilingual, bicultural theater company nationwide. CHUANG Stage serves audiences and artists in Boston, around the country and the world, creating dialogues that advance the Asian American community's cultural wellbeing, intergenerational exchanges, Queer and Trans liberation, and employment equity in the non-profit arts. For more information, visit www.chuangstage.org.

Pao Arts Center was established in 2017 as a visionary program between Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center (BCNC) and Bunker Hill Community College (BHCC). It is Chinatown's first arts and cultural center. For more information, please visit www.paoartscenter.org.

As a collective of Asian American theatre leaders and artists, AATAB aims to advance the field of Asian American theatre through a national network of organizations and artists. AATAB forms alliances with other theater groups of different affinities to inspire learning and sharing of knowledge and resources to promote a healthy, sustainable artistic ecology. For more information, please visit aataboston.com.