Julie at Chain Theater

Shall See Theater, Zihe Tian Present

JULIE
A World Premiere, Reimagining of August Stringdberg’s Miss Julie 

Written by Deijing Eloise Wang

Directed by Dejing Eloise Wang and Topaz Gao

Four Performances from March 6th to March 8th

Friday & Saturday at 8:30 PM, Saturday & Sunday at 2 PM

Chain Theater (99 Seat)

312 West 36th St, 3rd Floor

New York 10018

General Admission Tickets are $30

For tickets, please visit: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/julie-tickets-1980749205193?aff=oddtdtcreator 

Run time: 90 minutes (no intermission)

Julie, A Bold and Urgent Reimagining of August Strindberg’s Miss Julie, World Premiers At Chain Theater, New York

Shall See Theater (SST) and producer Zihe Tian present Julie, a world-premiere adaptation that reimagines August Strindberg’s Miss Julie within the Asian community, holding a ruthless mirror up to the enduring, shape-shifting mechanics of class, power, and desire. Presented in English across all four performances, the production also offers a sensory-friendly Saturday matinee, welcoming audiences into a theatrical experience that’s as accessible as it is electrifying.

Playwright-director Dejing Eloise Wang, co-directing with Topaz Gao, leads a cast of three: Victoria Chen as Julie, Jirachaya Kiri as Kristine, and John Jiang as Jean. Neil Wang, SST’s Artistic Director, also designs the lighting for this show. This March in New York, Neil, Eloise, and Zihe reunite for their fourth collaboration, bringing audiences an urgent, seductive new production that asks: who gets to rise, who gets to survive, and what it costs when desire becomes a battlefield.

Julie says, “I run a charity.” Jean says, “I’m a leftist.” Beneath the polished facade of performative progressiveness, two people from utterly different worlds tumble into a seductive, strategic, and ultimately deceptive love affair, one where morality and lust become weapons sharp enough to kill. Reimagined in 2026, this is romance as warfare: intimate, volatile, and relentlessly contemporary. August Strindberg’s Miss Julie is often framed as a story of seduction and collapse, an aristocratic woman and a servant crossing the line for one night, but the scandal is only the surface; underneath is an unflinching collision of class, gender, and survival instincts, grinding against each other until something breaks. Strindberg insisted Julie’s tragedy was inevitable, that identity, origin, “what’s in your blood” would always win. But today, we’re not so sure. This production turns the classic into a live question: what does class look like now, who holds power today, and what invisible rules are still quietly deciding who gets to rise, and who doesn’t?

To Eloise, Julie’s first concept came her as “what if Jean is a matcha-drinking, tote-carrying, clairo-listening performative male”, but when she actually started writing, she kept circling back to “Why is Miss Julie relevant to the Asian community now?”

The answer is in New York’s Manhattan Chinatown, Eloise says. Young Asian American would casually sign a petition that protest against 24-hour work day while walk past construction sites of gentrified apartments carefree. Yet those luxury apartments are owned by Asian American entrepreneurs who donate to Asian American museums to celebrate our legacy while driving out local residents for more profitable real estate. The dichotomy between speech and action is engulfing the community.

In the world of this story, Eloise wants to ask Julie “how does it feel to get money from unethical millionaires to help the people that they’ve exploited?” She wants to ask Jean “when you talk about equality, do you want equal rights for everyone or do you want the same opportunity for capitalistic exploitation?” Are we trying to eat the rich or become the rich? That’s what the playwright and director has been asking herself when she created Julie.

Neil Wang, Shall See Theater’s Artistic Director, chooses Julie to be the first production of the season. He says, “The title of Shall See Theater’s 2025-2027 Artistic Season, Hold, reminds me of this beautiful word in biology: symbiosis. I was hunting for a play that has the idea of an ultimate ecosystem: a site of beautiful, desperate dependance on each other. Strindberg’s Miss Julie, in our adaptation, Julie, is a perfect manifestation of symbiosis. I wanted to look at Julie and Jean through this lens: two organisms locked in a room, bound by a mutual, frantic need to survive, and a pursuit of happiness.”

In the natural world, symbiosis isn't always kind. It is often a friction-filled clinging, a state where one cannot exist without the weight of the other. Neil says that Strindberg wrote these characters through the cold eye of “naturalistic determinism,” suggesting they were brought down by their own biology, mere victims of their prewritten fate. But he wants to push back against that accusation. He’s searching for the moment where the system breaks, where the “parasitism” of class and power gives way to a rare, mutualistic pulse of emotion. He wants to find that brief, authentic clearing in the woods where they truly care for one another. The tragedy isn’t that they were born into a cage; it’s that for one shimmering second, they held each other with a sincerity that the world outside simply wouldn’t allow to grow.

Julie will be performed at Chain Theater, 99-seat (312 West 36 St, Floor 3, New York 10018). The venue is on the third floor of the building, accessible by elevator. For further accommodations, please email julie.shallsee@gmail.com at least 3 days before the event.

The Box Office opens 45 minutes prior to the start time of each performance. Seating is limited and provided on a first come, first served basis. All unclaimed reservations are released 30 minutes before start time.

Performances are scheduled as follows: Friday, March 6 at 8 PM, Saturday, March 7 at 2:30 PM and 8 PM, and Sunday, March 8 at 2:30 PM. The show will be performed in English. The show runs for 90 minutes without intermission.

“This is very exciting.” Producer and Dramaturg Zihe Tian says, “It’s great to be collaborate with this amazing team of artists and create something so relevant to the world, the city, the community we are living in.”

Julie is produced by Shall See Theater, executive producing by Zihe Tian. Scenic Design: Junran Charlotte Shi; Costume Design: Ziqi Zhang; Lighting Design: Zijun Neil Wang; Sound Design: Mikah Kota Carpio; General Manager: Jiani Bai, Production Stage Manager: Daisy Dai.

Dejing Eloise Wang (Playwright & Director) is a theatre director, playwright, and intimacy professional born and raised in Qingdao, China. Favorite credits: Anti-Gone?! (Edinburgh Fringe, A.R.T/New York), Tropopause (GAF 2024), As You Like It (Labowitz Theatre). For their not-so-serious theatrical portfolio, visit dejingeloisewang.com. For their even more unserious life portfolio, visit @de.jing_ on instagram.  

Zijun Neil Wang (Artistic Director of SST & Lighting Design) is a director and lighting designer with a BFA degree in Theatre from NYU Tisch Drama. He is the Assistant Lighting Designer of Kimberly Akimbo National Tour. He designed lighting for several Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway productions. Zijun proudly serves as the Artistic Director of Shall See Theater. He is attending CMU School of Drama with full tuition scholarship to pursue his MFA degree in lighting design. zijunneilwang.com

Zihe Tian (Producer & Dramaturg) is a producer, investor, dramaturg and consultant based in New York. She has worked on several Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway productions as well as on the west coast. BA: NYU, MFA: Columbia.

MEET THE CAST

Victoria Chen (Julie) grew up in Beijing, Switzerland, and Singapore before moving to the U.S. for college. She is a graduate of AMDA and The New School. Her international credits include performances on CCTV and at the Musikverein in Vienna. Off-Broadway credits include Bloom: A Musical Myth (Connelly Theater) and Microbes (Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater). Off-Off Broadway: Fluffy the Pine, Humanity Denied, and Nine Shadows in Bloom. Favorite roles include Mimi (Rent) and Ariel (The Little Mermaid). As a producer, she has created concerts at 54 Below, including 54 Sings East Meets West and 54 Introduces: International Musical. @deervictoria_

Jirachaya Kiri (Kristine) is a Thai American actor originally from the Bay Area, where she graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in cognitive science. Primarily a screen actor, she’s played roles from scheming cheerleaders to neurotic art students to unimpressed dates. She’s very excited to be performing on stage, live! ig: @jirachaya.png

John Jiang (Jean) is from Xinjiang China, and he came to the US at age of 15 to attend Cheshire Academy where he found his passion in acting, since then he acquired his BA in theater from Union College, and he recently graduated as a company member from American Academy of Dramatic Art. Since graduating, he has taken on many roles on stage and in short films, such as, Sir Kong in Of Ashes And Souls, The Eldest in Not Our Home Not Our Home, John in short film APE etc. He is super excited to be part Julie, and bringing this story to life. He would like to thank everyone who has helped him along his journey, without all of you this could never happen.

More information can be found at our Official Instagram here:

https://www.instagram.com/shallseetheater?igsh=cmN2cGsweXowZ2lp

Tickets can be purchased through Eventbrite HERE:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/julie-tickets-1980749205193?aff=oddtdtcreator 

Authors

• Corning White