Adopt Andrea!

We have 3 more days on our Kickstarter campaign! We hope you'll contribute to our FREE production of PAPER ANGELS in San Francisco. Lovely Andrea Day is another actor you can adopt with a $1,200 pledge - she will be playing Miss Gregory, the missionary lady with a penchant for the folksong My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean. If you adopted Andrea, you would get a journal of her experiences in the play with heartwarming pictures and a dinner with her in New York or San Francisco. PLUS, you would really be an angel by putting us within distance of making our goal of $5,000! But any donation - $10 or $20 or $50 - would greatly help. We don't get ANY of the pledges if we don't meet our goal... and there are only 3 days left!

Where do you come from? What's your family background?
I'm the big sister in my small, cute Texan family.  My extended family all lives in Texas, but my parents, brother, and I moved around a lot while growing up so I come from Beaumont and Corpus Christi, Texas, but also Asheville, North Carolina and the San Francisco Bay Area.  My parents moved back to Texas when I was a sophomore at UC Davis, and I then lived all over the Bay Area (Calistoga, Oakland, Berkeley, San Francisco) before heading east for grad school. 

How did you get into acting and how would you describe where you are in your career?
I always did plays in middle school and high school, but didn't start following the path seriously until my junior year in college.  I was a Human Development major, and worked part time at the on-campus day care.  I had twin little girls in my class whose mom was an Acting MFA student, and one day I told her that I kept chickening out on auditioning for the college shows.  "Hmm," she said, "Next show, I'll help you with your audition."  She kept her word, and I auditioned for SOUTH PACIFIC that December.  I ended up as Nellie and the rest...history. 

I am at an exciting time in my career.  After  3 years of intensive graduate school training at Penn State, and 4 years working in New York City, I feel like I'm finally in the game in the way I want to be.  I'm thrilled to be a producing member of a theater company called new theater house (www.newtheaterhouse.org) and on the board of another company called Red Fern Theatre (www.redferntheatre.org.)  I also do an amazing amount of readings and small projects for an exciting array of theater artists here in NYC, and it thrills me to see everyone working their way to success. (Working HARD!  Theater is not for the lazy :)

What excites you the most about theater? What kind of theater do you want to be part of?
I am excited by the possibility of theater - the different forms it can take, the way it can be done on a shoestring or with the huge budget of a small film, traditional or avant garde, backyard or Broadway.  When you pair that possibility with the immediacy of live audience and live actors...thrilling.

I want to be part of theater that is smart, innovative, and devoted.   And, in fact, I am!  The two companies that I work with inspire me daily. 

Have you ever been involved in any humanitarian or community activities? Please describe.
I am a professional audiodescriber for the blind, which is the best humanitarian job I could ever ask for.  I know most people don't know what that is, so I'm happy to say that ABC News and New York 1 have done stories on it! You can watch them here, it gives a great overview of the work, and the impact it has on the blind patrons of the service, who in this case happen to be awesome high school students. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vZ-rgG99Fs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97c_KNt3pUI
 
How do you make ends meet? What have you done in the past for money and what do you do now?
Well, the audiodescription is a paying gig, so that helps.  I also have my real estate license and rent apartments in Brooklyn, which sometimes feels like a humanitarian effort as well!  It's hard to get an apartment in New York, and I enjoy helping people easily find a place to call home.  In the past, I have done lots of interesting things, and thankfully, not any humiliating ones: manager of a Calistoga B&B, Special Events and Volunteer Manager for a non-profit theater, middle school drama teacher, babysitter, caterer, administrative assistant, and many many more.

What other activities do you enjoy besides theater?
Travel.  Salsa Dancing.  Hiking/Camping.  Escaping the city.  Practicing my Spanish.  Stoop Sale-ing.  Dreaming big.   Laughing.

Adopt Andrea - pledge $1,200 towards PAPER ANGELS in San Francisco! It's free. It's community. And it needs your support!

PAPER ANGELS - The Video Design, part 1

PAPER ANGELS takes place on Angel Island in 1915, and follows a group of Chinese who are detained on Angel Island because of the Chinese Exclusion Act. To create the world of the play, we'll be projecting archival images not only of Angel Island, but also of anti-Chinese magazine covers, posters and advertisements that were prevalent in late 1800s and early 1900s. The play begins with photographs of the Chinese coming across the ocean and the Chinese Exclusion Act itself. 

Projection of the Chinese Exclusion Act, PAPER ANGELS workshop 2009

Enacted in 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was the crowning achievement of the anti-Chinese movement, which sought to drive the Chinese out of America by any means possible. The Exclusion Act was not revoked until 1943, when Franklin Roosevelt repealed it to encourage Chinese cooperation in the Allied battle against the Japanese. It's a striking document, with the lovely penmanship of the time, but the language is completely over the top. Chinese laborers were barred from coming to American because, "...in the opinion of the Government of the United States the coming of Chinese laborers to this country endangers the good order of certain localities...."

It's hard to believe now that the Chinese are considered the model minority, but from the 1870s to the early 1900s, the West Coast was virulently anti-Chinese. See this blog to learn about quite a few atrocities from that era, including the infamous Rock Springs Massacre. The Chinese were not only reviled as racially inferior, they were also considered a threat for being such cheap labor (the more things change...) In this cartoon from the anti-Chinese San Francisco magazine The Wasp, a buck-toothed, slanty-eyed Chinese Octopus Man puts a group of able-bodied white men out of a job. (Click to view in all its incredible details.) This amazing broadside, which will be the backdrop for Fong's monologue, urges you to come vent on the Chinese Question with CHINESE coming at ya in GIANT type.

These negative stereotypes are part of an uncomfortable past that I think it's important to face. It's not likely that a minority in America will face the same drastic open persecution that the Chinese did, but we continually see the same sentiment rearing its ugly head. Maybe by recognizing the outrageousness of this ad in which a Chinese man is about to down a yummy rodent, we'll check our impulses towards racist nationalistic paranoia. 

Josh Thelin as Henderson, Rough on Rats

Think I'm exaggerating? Read this from the Tea Party. Substitute "Chinese" for "Amnesty" and it may as well have been published in The Wasp. 

Adopt Carl!

Here's another one of our wonderful PAPER ANGELS actors for you to adopt! For $1,200 you can pay for Carl's R/T airfare, give him a bed for 5 nights, a per diem, 2 meals a day and pay. In return, you'll receive a journal of Carl's experience in the play with heartwarming photographs AND we'll pay for a dinner, just you and Carl! Pledge $1,200 on our kickstarter campaign to adopt Carl! 

Where do you come from? What's your family background?

I come from a long line of bandit warriors.  I was abandoned by my mother who at the time was hiding out in a nunnery.  My father was one of the Chanktar, a tribe of bandit warriors from a time and world we only thought to be fantasy.  Well, it's more exciting than saying I was born in Hong Kong, and was raised in CT since I was 4 years old. 

How did you get into acting and how would you describe where you are in your career? 

Well,... I was raised by television, literally, and was mostly ignored by my mom.  Don't get me wrong, she did her best as a single mother of 2 children.  She only did what she knew.  Her parents never really knew to ask if she was ok if she was unhappy,.. and my mom was the same with us.  So, as I grew up, watching the magical worlds of TV and film, I realized I enjoyed living out a fantasy. Throughout my early school years, I would go to camps and special programs for creative kids.  In highschool, I went to an arts high school and majored in dance, and was also part of a traveling acting troupe.  My sister and I also created our own band. When I finally went to college, I was at a loss of what to study but after 3 years of uncertainty, I ended up in the acting program at the University of Connecticut, where I got a BFA in acting.  Afterwards, I eventually went to NYC, and took classes from the Eric Morris System of acting from the Bova Actor's Workshop.

Where am I in my career? ha ha.  Well, I don't know, I honestly think I'm just at the very beginning though I've done tons of stuff.  Based on work alone, sure I guess I've done pretty good, but most people measure career monetarily.  In that case, then no... I'm nowhere! But, I can say that it's only a matter of time before I get more paying gigs, and as all artists or freelancers eventually would like, be able to live off my art.  Oh money.  It's nice.  It does provide the means of convenience and ability to help others.  As of now, I have a role that's potentially going to be the highest paying gig I've ever had!  So,.. we'll see :-)

What excites you the most about theater? What kind of theater do you want to be part of? I love how theater brings you into a different world. Theater can be so inspiring, it can be so full, sense-shattering, rebirthing old ideas in a fresh way that moves you.  Great writing and ideas presented in surprising ways... that's the kind of theater I'd like to be a part of!

Have you ever been involved in any humanitarian or community activities? Please describe. Growing up, I always thought of being an undercover highschool police officer, or top secret operative, or a superhero.  I often volunteered in either school organizations and after school programs aimed at helping youth through acting and open forum discussions to address issues like drugs, pregnancy, abuse, racism and homophobia.

How do you make ends meet?
I have done almost everything for money!  REALLY ha ha.  Some things I've moved on from, and don't do anymore, like being a waiter, or selling things I'm not passionate about, like vacuums. I've performed country western music and been a costume character in an amusement park. I worked in a warehouse moving office equipment and furniture, sold magazines by phone, made earrings from home, worked as a production assistant for films and TV and worked as a caterer and butler. I was in the Navy,  I was a DJ and I've taught hip-hop and tai-chi. I worked in a comicbook store and a concession stand and as an usher at a cinema. I've also worked as an extra and back-up dancer for bands... I'm sure there are other things I'm not mentioning here.

What other activities do you enjoy besides theater? 

 If I wrote or drew more and better, I'd say writing and drawing, ha ha.  I love films, music and comic books!  Yeah, love comics.  If I wasn't pursuing performance, I'd be interested in producing/creating films and comics.  I also enjoy spirituality, working out, cooking, eating, sleeping, meeting new people, creating memories, being with friends, doing outdoor activities with friends, or staying indoors and playing games,  going on adventures ... and I'll stop now.. or else I won't.... 

ADOPT ME!!!!!!!

100 Year Old Hip Hop Chop Socky

Pok dai-bay, cheong son gaw,
Yun-yun wah-ngaw mo lo-paw!
Tien-nyet yau tchien de chow fon-gaw! 

In the first scene in PAPER ANGELS, a character named Lum recites this silly little ditty that playwright Genny Lim remembered from her childhood. When we did this scene last year, the rhythm of this little verse made me think of hip hop and I toyed with taking it all the way, maybe even with Lum doing some human beatbox. It seemed a little too much though, so I just let the actor stumble through it, though I did suggest that he liken it to a childhood rhyme.

This year, I did some more research, thinking there MUST be a Chinese version of speech song or recitative, maybe in Chinese opera?  I don't know what I finally googled but I discovered shuo chang or kuaiban shu.



It's apparently hundreds of years old from the Shandong Province in China - okay, that's north China, but who's to say that Lum couldn't have been part Hakka like the guy above? I'm part Hakka and I can personally attest that Hakkas are EVERYWHERE. They're in Peru. They're in Malaysia. They're definitely in southern China. Or maybe he was totally awestruck by some kickass traveling Shandong Province kuaiban shu master? Whatever, it's an amazing technique and the only reason I can think that it's not more known is that there's obviously nothing remotely elite about it.

Now I'm all about teaching the actor playing Lum to accompany his rap with those bamboo clappers. He has another little ditty further along in the script too, this time in English. Get a load of this Canadian professor Kuaiban-ing it in English, hot!

--Victoria

PAPER ANGELS will be performing in Portsmouth Square, Sept 15-17. Help us bring this seminal play to San Francisco - we have until August 30 to raise $5,000 on Kickstarter!

Adopt Max!

We're taking PAPER ANGELS to the San Francisco Fringe Festival and we need your help.  So as a unique part of our Kickstarter campaign, we're giving you the opportunity to ADOPT AN ACTOR! 

Max Carpenter is a young actor who is currently attending NYU. You may remember him from our Take Two reading of Peter Shaffer's THE ROYAL HUNT OF THE SUN. Despite his lovable nature, he will be playing Henderson in PAPER ANGELS. 

Adopt Max today! For a donation of $1,200 you can pay for Max's R/T airfare, room, meals, per diem and pay. In exchange for your sponsorship, you will be listed as a REBEL in the souvenir program and receive some marvelous gifts including a journal of Max's experiences in the play (with heartwarming photographs) and dinner with Max in either San Francisco or New York. After learning more about Max below, we're sure you'll want to adopt this fine young man.

Where do you come from? What's your family background?
Much like a fine wine, my roots come from weathered soil. My great-great-grandfather Nikolai Chuprin was a Russian goldsmith who immigrated to Hawaii on a Manchurian freighter to escape the persecution of the October revolution. He worked as a handyman until he fell off a roof he was fixing and died, leaving his 4 year old daughter Anastasia, my great-grandmother, to be raised by the Salvation Army. She eventually moved to Florida and married an older, wealthy real estate baron, but they lost all their money when the stock market crashed in '29. She spent the rest of her life caring for her now sickly husband, constantly moving to find a climate suitable to his TB. They eventually found themselves in southern California. That's my dad's side. Mama's family story is less illustrious. They were all Swedish pig farmers.    

How did you get into acting and how would you describe where you are in your career?
I started doing theatre in summer camps. I remember being twelve years old and doing neutral mask work for the first time in a two week summer mask intensive for teens. It was some pretty trippy stuff for a kid going into middle school. Then there was Commedia camp, Shakespeare camp, broad sword camp. I never told anyone on my lacrosse team I was into all that stuff.

Now I have a year of drama school left before I have to go out into the world and be a real person. I'm not too worried about it. I'm freelancing with few different agents and they return my phone calls most of the time. But if you're an agent looking to sign some young talent, please, let's schedule a meeting!      

What excites you the most about theater? What kind of theater do you want to be part of?
I don't know how you feel about new age spirituality, but I think it has its salient points. In The Power of Myth Joseph Campbell says that collectively, our singular reason to exist is to viscerally experience the pyscho-physical sensations of being alive. That's what I love most about the theatre. You get to live through all these fantastic stories and experience things people with real jobs would never have the opportunity to do.

Have you ever been involved in any humanitarian or community activities?
I was a fairly active member of my church as a kid. We would go on service trips and build houses in rural Appalachia and have bingo night for the homeless and make them tacos. My high school was also really into community service, I assistant taught at a school for El Salvadorian immigrants.  

How do you make ends meet? What have you done in the past for money and what do you do now? 
Well, I've never been a escort, stripper or prostitute if thats what you're wondering. I spent the last few summers working at my neighborhood pool in Maryland. That was an awesome job. We got paid 10$ an hour to tan and play beach volley ball. I'm still a certified pool operator and life guard.

What other activities do you enjoy besides theater?
My mom teaches art to kindergardeners and got me into art at a pretty young age. My friends are always surprised when I bring them to my parent's house and see the years of art projects decorating the walls. I throw pots and paint, some water color, but mostly acrylic. Recently, I've been getting more into wire work and metal sculpture. I made my sister a giant spork out of aluminum sheeting for Christmas this year.    

To adopt Max, click here and pledge $1,200. Maybe he'll even throw you a pot! We'll email you to ask you which actor you'd like to adopt. And it's Kickstarter, so you will not be charged $1,200 unless we reach our funding goal of $5,000 on August 30.

Promo Shoot for Direct Arts A Go Go

Suzanne Woodrow who is on our Benefit Committee writes about the recent glam promo shoot for Direct Arts A Go Go, our swinging '60s benefit on June 10th, which will feature Jenny Rocha, Miss Saturn and DJ Josh Styles of the fabulous Subway Soul parties.See Suzanne in the photos below (she's the bombshell in the baby blue bubble dress). --V

Last year Syama Meagher, a good friend of mine, invited me to a fundraising event called the Paper Angels Party.   I was thoroughly impressed with how large of an event this turned out to be with an open bar, a silent auction AND two dance performances.  I even had my photo taken on the moon - loved that idea!

Recently, Syama invited me to a second Direct Arts event, Take Two, where I saw a short experimental film about a mother and daughter, followed by a play called THE FEMALE TERRORIST PROJECT.  The performance was incredible and very powerful – so much so, that I wanted to know more about what Direct Arts really does and see what I can do to participate.

Syama graciously informed Victoria of my interest and shortly thereafter I met Victoria for breakfast and she told me about Direct Arts' current project – a party with a swinging 60’s theme to benefit a tour of the play PAPER ANGELS and a workshop of a new play about go-go girls.  She mentioned that she was organizing a promo shoot for the benefit so I met her again the following week in the private room of 10 Degrees, a bar in the East Village.  I didn’t realize what a production this was going to be until I was putting my hair in an upsweep and drawing on cat eyes.  We all really looked the part; heels, pearls and all.

The best part was that we all looked great in the photos, but no one can tell how rigged up our dresses were! Victoria couldn't even bend down because hers was so tight and I had tape across my back holding my dress shut. Hilarious.

Culture Clash in Philanthropy

So this weekend I paid a visit to my parents and while my father flipped channels between DIE HARD 2 and a maniacally enthusiastic Taiwanese game show, I submitted to the usual unending complaint over my choice of career . Why you not making money? Your cousin so-and-so making $100,000 a year! Their opposition to the arts was magnified this time around by a filmmaker, who had sent them an email asking for donations so he could send every Congressperson a DVD of his pro-Taiwanese independence film. My mother alternately called the guy annoying, shameful and impolite. Even though she supports his political position.

I think I'm a little bit of an anomaly since most Asian-Americans who are in the arts come from an intellectual or at least a more assimilated background. My parents are pretty typical work-a-day immigrants. Though my father went to college and speaks about ten languages, my mother barely speaks English and neither of them read anything except Chinese newspapers. It's pretty discouraging trying to get their support and the support of their friends. I find myself constantly having to explain not only why the arts are important (already a Herculean task of infinite patience), but the whole concept of philanthropy.

I'm not the first person in the nonprofit world to notice this. There aren't any quantifiable records of how much is given by minorities to charitable organizations, but there are plenty of working papers on Asian-American philanthropy. Georgetown University's Public Policy Institute cites anecdotal evidence in one such paper that ''many Chinese-Americans do not give at all, and those that do, give to their university, or to their church, but not to ethnic causes.'' Neither do they give to the arts, which at 4% is depressingly one of the smallest sectors of charitable giving anyway. Or if Asian-Americans do give to the arts, it's to major organizations like the Met or Lincoln Center. Apparently, it's the same concept as voting Republican - do what rich people do and you will be rich. Giving to little arts groups like ours that really need funding never occurs to them.

But then again, if you're Chinese, the Confucian hierarchy is insidiously ingrained. From what I see, all Chinese giving is either an offering to an authority figure or it revolves around the idea of guanxi, familial relationships. This seems to be rife not only among Chinese, but among all East Asians, backed up, no doubt, by a whole bunch of ancient proverbs that I'm not familiar with. Of course, people don't generally give unless they are familiar with who/what they are giving to, but it seems doubly hard to convince Asians. My parents would never give to the filmmaker who sent them that email even though at heart, they support his cause. There's the problem of alternative arts being such a foreign concept and then there's the problem of not having a concept of philanthropy as a form of civic participation and a direct means to influence society.

I don't think this is limited to Asians - I think Latinos are also relatively new to the idea of philanthropy. Well, Latinos and Asians are some of the newest immigrants, and it's obvious that newer immigrants probably have less to give and when they do, they are most likely to be sending money back home. But with $1,620 being the average household gift to charitable organizations in 2008, I think income really isn't so much the issue as the fact that the concept is so alien. A 2003 Indiana University study among 419 immigrant households concludes that "nonwhites are about 4 percentage points less likely to participate in charitable giving even after we have controlled for permanent income, immigrant status, and other demographic variables."

There are exceptions, of course, like the Ong Family Foundation, which has given millions to nonprofit organizations, including several small- to medium-sized theater groups. In a NY Times article, Nelson Louis, the Executive Director, said of himself and founding trustee Danny Ong Yee, ''We were not the royal class; we were the peasant class...My mother did not know how to read or write; she was a seamstress. My father worked in a restaurant. Danny's father worked in a laundry.''

Studies show people are more likely to give if they are religious and if they start young, volunteering at community organizations. Both Louis and Ong Yee worked at the Chinese-American Planning Council when they were just starting out. Two of our board members are active church goers (one is Asian, one Latino). Maybe there is some key in this?

Minorities are now the majority in most cities, but it's really difficult reaching out to all but the few members of the intelligentsia and politically active for funding. I wonder how are other minority arts organizations who don't have deep pockets to pick are addressing this issue. Maybe there is a way for us to brainstorm or join together in reaching out, educating and growing minority support for the arts.

--Victoria

Articles referenced:

Bernstein, Nina. (2007)"Some Complain of Class Divid in Chinese-Americans' Charity" New York Times Web

Bernstein, Nina. (2007) "Asian Americans lend a New Wrinkle to Philanthropy" New York Times Web

Ho, Andrew. (2004) "Asian-American Philanthropy: Expanding Knowledge, Increasing Possibilities" Center for Public & Nonprofit Leadership Web

Osili, Una Okonkwo and Dan Du. (2003) "Immigration Assimilation and Charitable Giving" Department of Economics, Indiana University Web

"Giving Statistics" (2009) National Parks Service Web