East West Players and API Rise Presents FROM NUMBER TO NAME

East West Players in partnership with API Rise will present From Number to Name, a world premiere two night event devised and directed by powerhouse artist, activist and elected political representative Kristina Wong (Kristina Wong For Public Office), Saturday, April 10 and Sunday, April 11th, 2021.

The production is the second offering of the Virtual 55th Anniversary Season of East West Players,Between Worlds, led by Producing Artistic Director Snehal Desai.

In From Number to Name, formerly incarcerated Asian Americans and those in the API community impacted by mass incarceration take us on a journey through their experiences. From Number to Name challenges viewers to reflect on our criminal justice system and imagines its future.

API RISE is a nonprofit organization that seeks to empower the Asian, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander American communities and specifically those individuals who have been impacted by the criminal justice system.

"API RISE is proud, honored, and humbled to partner with East West Players (EWP)," says API RISE Executive Director Paul Jung, "We are an organization that seeks to include, empower, support, and amplify the voices of formerly incarcerated Asian, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Americans, a group that is especially invisible and forgotten. We find alignment with East West Players, an organization that's dedicated to addressing social justice and advancing equity issues for the APIA community through transformative arts since 1965. API RISE is excited to participate in the From Numbers to Names production and look forward to the continued partnership with EWP!"

Kristina Wong was featured in the New York Times' Off Color series "highlighting artists of color who use humor to make smart social statements about the sometimes subtle, sometimes obvious ways that race plays out in America today." She is a performance artist, comedian, writer and elected representative who has been presented internationally across North America, the UK, Hong Kong and Africa.

She's been a guest on late night shows on Comedy Central and FX, and an actor on film and TV. She starred in her own pilot presentation with Lionsgate for truTV. Her commentaries have appeared on American Public Media's Marketplace, PBS, VICE, Jezebel, Playgirl Magazine, Huffington Post and CNN. She's been awarded artist residencies from the MacDowell Colony, New York Theater Workshop, the San Diego International Airport and Ojai Playwrights Festival.

Her work has been awarded with grants from Creative Capital, The MAP Fund, Center for Cultural Innovation, National Performance Network, a COLA Master Artist Fellowship from the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, eight Los Angeles Artist-in-Residence awards, and Center Theatre Group's 2019 Sherwood Award.

She's created viral web series like How Not to Pick Up Asian Chicks and just launched the second season of the award winning Radical Cram School. Her rap career in post-conflict Northern Uganda is the subject of her last solo theater show The Wong Street Journal which toured the US, Canada and Lagos, Nigeria (presented by the US Consulate). Her long running show Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest looked at the high rates of depression and suicide among Asian American women and is now a concert film.

Her most recent performance project is Kristina Wong for Public Office - a simultaneous real life stint as the elected representative of Wilshire Center Koreatown Sub-district 5 Neighborhood Council and rally campaign show. That show's national tour was sidelined by the pandemic and has pivoted to streaming performances.

Kristina's current pandemic project is the Auntie Sewing Squad, a national network of volunteers sewing masks for vulnerable communities. The experience of erecting this remote factory in ten days at the start of the pandemic is the subject of Kristina's current performance Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord which she is developing as a New York Theater Workshop Artistic Instigator.

The Virtual 55th Anniversary Season of East West Players, Between Worlds, will also include the world premiere of Sitayana by Lavina Jadhwani, in partnership with San Francisco's EnActe Arts in late May, Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre (vAct)'s production of 1 Hour Photo by Tetsuro Shigematsu in June, and actor Danny Pudi (TV's Community and Apple+'s Mythic Quest) making his debut as a playwright with his show in development, Running, in late summer of 2021.

Tickets to all Season 55 shows are available now via the 2021 East West Passport. Purchase an East West Passport to view the entire upcoming collection of digital programming, plus exclusive events and content including the December 2020 Daniel Ho concert filmed at the David Henry Hwang Theater in Little Tokyo. Single tickets for From Number To Name available beginning March 8th, 2021, as pay-what-you-can.

More information on memberships and ticketing at www.eastwestplayers.org, or by contacting the EWP Box Office at boxoffice@eastwestplayers.org.

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