Ma-Yi Theater Company Announces New Commission & Activities for 22-23 Season

Ma-Yi Theater Company - which recently commissioned and presented the world premiere of Daniel K. Isaac's ONCE UPON A (korean) TIME - announced that Michi Barall is the inaugural recipient of a Generation Now commission from Ma-Yi Theater Company and The Children's Theatre Company in Minneapolis. Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Generation Now brings together five cohort theaters to commission and develop new works for multigenerational audiences over a five-year period. Other cohorts include The Latino Theatre Company, Penumbra, and Native Voices at The Autry.

Michi Barall's new work, The Drawing Play, will receive developmental workshops in New York City and Minneapolis en route to full production at Ma-Yi and The Children's Theatre. Ms. Barall is a member of the Ma-Yi Writers Lab and has had two of her works produced by Ma-Yi Theater: Rescue Me and Peer Gynt and The Norwegian Haha Band for which she wrote the book.

Ma-Yi will serve as the sole U.S. partner & host for the GENesis 2022: Pocket Conference & Festival, which celebrates innovation and reinvention in Asian theater and performance over the past decade. Running November 21-27, GENesis 2022 is presented by fu-GEN Asian Canadian Theatre Company in partnership with Ma-Yi Theater Company, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre, and the University of Toronto. The conference and festival will feature digital artistic presentations, paper presentations, panels, and round tables.

Ma-Yi will continue to lead community events focused on Anti-Asian Violence. The next event will take place in partnership with Audible Theater on November 1 following a performance of Yilong Liu's Good Enemy at the Minetta Lane Theater. The post-show conversation will feature Yasmeen Hamza, CEO of Womankind, and attorney Amy Hsieh.

These community events focused on Anti-Asian Violence were begun by Ma-Yi during its run of Lloyd Suh's The Chinese Lady at The Public Theater following the assault of a traditional Chinese lion dancer as they traveled to the theater for a preview performance. As attacks on members of the Asian community in New York City have continued, Ma-Yi is committed to helping cultivate safety by building awareness in all communities in order to stop these violent crimes.

Ma-Yi is pleased to welcome the musical KPOP to Broadway. The production is currently running at Circle in the Square Theatre and is set to open on Sunday, November 20, 2022. Ma-Yi, in partnership with Ars Nova and Woodshed Collective, produced the Off-Broadway premiere of KPOP in 2015.

Ma-Yi is also pleased that its co-production of Hansol Jung's Wolf Play with Soho Rep will enjoy an encore engagement at MCC Theater in January 2023.

Since its founding in 1989, Ma-Yi Theater Company has distinguished itself as one of the country's leading incubators of new work shaping the national discourse about what it means to be Asian American today. Please visit www.ma-yitheatre.org for more information.

About Ma-Yi Theater Company

Founded in 1989, Ma-Yi Theater Company is a Drama Desk, Lortel, and Obie Award-winning, Off-Broadway not-for-profit organization whose primary mission is to develop and produce new and innovative plays by Asian American writers.

Its numerous acclaimed productions include Mike Lew's Teenage Dick and Bike America, Qui Nguyen's The Inexplicable Redemption of Agent G and Soul Samurai (with Vampire Cowboys), and Hansol Jung's Among The Dead. Other productions include: Rescue Me by Michi Barall, Lloyd Suh's The Chinese Lady, and Lonnie Carter's The Romance of Magno Rubio.

The Ma-Yi Writers Lab, a signature program founded in 2004, is the largest resident company of Asian-American Playwrights ever assembled. The Lab emboldens a new generation of Asian American artists to voice their experiences, while developing a steady stream of quality new works by Asian American Playwrights for Ma-Yi's own performing repertory. New works developed at the Writers Lab have gone on to successful productions around the country, at such theaters as Victory Gardens, Laguna Playhouse, Long Wharf Theater, Woolly Mammoth and the Actors Theater of Louisville, to name a few.

Ma-Yi's productions have earned 10 Obie Awards, 5 Henry Hewes Award nominations, a Drama Desk nomination for Best Play and the Special Drama Desk Award for "more than two decades of excellence and for nurturing Asian-American voices in stylistically varied and engaging theater.