Casting Announced For US Premiere Of WHITE PEARL At Studio Theatre

By: A.A. Cristi Oct. 11, 2019

In her US premiere, rising Thai-Australian playwright Anchuli Felicia King takes a scathing look at the ugliness of the beauty industry in White Pearl, beginning November 6. 2019 at Studio Theatre and directed by Desdemona Chiang.

The draft ad for a new skin-whitening cream from Clearday, a fast-growing cosmetics startup based in Singapore, leaks on YouTube, amassing views and scorn that send the company's all-female executive team into a frenzy as they try to contain the story before it hits the US market. Scapegoats are named, cover-ups planned, press statements written, crisis meetings convened, and alliances forged as the six women try to make this nightmare disappear. With swagger and dark humor, White Pearl interrogates globalism, millennial corporate culture, and whiteness as beauty's gold standard.

"You probably haven't heard of Anchuli Felicia King yet, but this Thai-Australian writer is premiering three plays on three continents this season, and we're thrilled to present the US premiere of White Pearl at Studio," said Studio's Artistic Director David Muse. "Felicia's dialogue is smart, fast, and vicious-I think DC is a great home for this story about corporate culture and accountability in a globalized age. Felicia says she wants to write like David Mamet, and I understand the comparison-she's not afraid of ugliness and she's interested in both the brutality of cutthroat capitalism and the stories of humans inside these larger systems."

The company's six executives are all Asian women under 35 from different countries, and with varying backgrounds and relationships to the English language. The women powering Clearday are CEO Priya Singh (26, Indian-Singaporean), Sunny Lee (24, Chinese-Singaporean), Ruki Minami (22, Japanese), Built Suttikul (23, Thai-American), Soo-Jin Park (33, South Korean), and Xiao Chen (29, Chinese).

Making up the cast of White Pearl are Shanta Parasuraman, Jody Doo, Resa Mishina, Diana Huey, Narea Kang, Jenna Zhu, and Zachary Fall as Marcel Benoit

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