MandarinWorks Theatre Festival to Present Two New Original Mandarin Works

New York-based MandarinWorks Theatre Festival will present two new original Mandarin works: RIPPLES FROM A LOST SONG and HERE'S A BLUE MORPHO FOR YOU. Incubated through our community-engaged festival, both works will debut at 224 WAVERLY THEATER from Friday, April 15th to Sunday, April 17th.

The MandarinWorks Theatre Festival strives to provide a platform for early-career Chinese diaspora artists to connect and collaborate with arts enthusiasts from the Chinese students and scholars' community in New York. "We hope to offer the resources to incubate new original Mandarin works from the community and for the community," said Festival Producer Kally (Kangdeng) Zhao.

Engaging the Chinese diaspora community from all backgrounds, the festival holds space to process the collective experience of being Chinese or AAPI in a world that is deeply divided. In these challenging times, the company comes together to reminisce on what it means to reimagine futurity through understanding intergenerational love and pain, comfort and guilt, joy and sorrow.

Festival dramaturg Naimeng Guo chose "The Texture of Life" as the theme for this year's festival, partly inspired by textures created by the stratification and layering of colorful beds of sedimentary rock created over time. "Just like these rocks, we are always the product of what came before us, and we will always be forever changed when familiar traces of our loved one's existence become a permanent residue in our bodies, in our memories, and in these layers of rock," said Festival Artistic Director Zhen Yu Yao.

RIPPLES FROM A LOST SONG marks the Mandarin playwriting debut for Festival Artistic Director: Zhen Yu Yao and the directing debut for Shuyan Yang. HERE'S A BLUE MORPHO FOR YOU also marks the directing debut for Aileen Wu and the playwriting debut for Yudun Wang.

The design team for RIPPLES FROM A LOST SONG includes Tsui C Wang (Scenic Designer), Jasmine Gu (Costume Designer), Yvonne Ye (Lighting Designer), and Xi (Zoey) Lin (Sound Designer). The design team for HERE'S A BLUE MORPHO FOR YOU includes Jennifer (Yuqing) Cao (Scenic Designer), Jasmine Gu (Costume Creative Direction), Grace Zhang (Costume Lead), Yvonne Ye (Lighting Designer), and Xi (Zoey) Lin (Sound Designer).

For ticketing information, visit bit.ly/MandarinWorks