GUMIHO: A Free Staged Reading Announced At Theatre Rhinoceros, June 13

If you have been waiting your whole life for the arrival of Asian American lesbian/queer horror theatre, playwright Nina Ki is here with complexly flawed characters and razor-sharp dialogue ablaze. Ki, a self-described “Queerean” (Queer + Korean) playwright who uses xe/she/they pronouns, is one of the most exciting and important new voices in modern playwriting amid a bloom of spotlighted, Asian American-targeted content for the stage.

While new Broadway works like HERE LIES LOVE and the short-lived but triumphant KPOP are vehicles for glamor, stardom, and spectacle, Asian Americans, especially further marginalized LGBTQ+ Asian Americans, and then even further marginalized AFAB (assigned female at birth) Asian American queers, are ever in need of stories that humanize, humble, and interrogate the culturally informed patterns, traumas, joys, connection, and loneliness of existing day-to-day as an Asian queer person trying to find community.       

GUMIHO: A Free Staged Reading tells the story of Kam Grey, a Korean adoptee and former reality TV star in her late twenties who has just been broken up with by her longtime girlfriend. She quickly re-immerses herself in the alcohol- and lust-fueled world of the Los Angeles queer scene, where she uses and is used by women. Through a series of hookups, Kam is forced to face some monstrous realizations about herself, her past, and the deep-seated fears that keep her from connection and happiness. GUMIHO's ensemble of Asian queer women and nonbinary & trans characters reveal a queer community in desperate need of interpersonal connection, but consistently sabotaged by the characters' own struggles with cultural trauma, defensiveness, loneliness, and fear of rejection - monsters of the human psyche that manifest in elegantly terrifying ways onstage. For queer Asian American audiences, this intersectional isolation may ring as painfully familiar - which makes GUMIHO all the more important as a real-world connection point for its intended in-person audiences.  

GUMIHO: A Free Staged Reading is directed by Ely Sonny Orquiza, assistant directed by Crystal Liu, facilitated by Theatre Rhinoceros' Theatre Bay Area Arts Leadership Resident Tanika Baptiste, and performed by a cast of Bay Area actors at Theatre Rhinoceros, the longest-running LGBTQ+ theatre in the world.

In Nina Ki's queer horror play “Gumiho,” Korean adoptee and former reality TV star Kam Grey has just been broken up with by her longtime girlfriend. She quickly re-immerses herself in the alcohol- and lust-fueled world of the Los Angeles queer scene, where she uses and is used by women. Through a series of hookups, Kam is forced to face some monstrous realizations about herself, her past, and the deep-seated fears that keep her from connection and happiness. "Gumiho: A Free Staged Reading" is directed by artist, director, and educator Ely Sonny Orquiza, assistant directed by Crystal Liu, facilitated by Theatre Rhinoceros' Theatre Bay Area Arts Leadership Resident Tanika Baptiste, and performed by Sarah Catherine Chan, Zolboo Namkhaidorj, Raye Narra, Helene Park, Dom Refuerzo, and Amethyst Zhang.