c/o John Buzzetti
The Gersh Agency
41 Madison Avenue, 33rd Floor
New York, NY 10010-2210
(212) 634-8107
(212) 391-8459 fax
Email:
newdramatists@newdramatists.org
PORCELAIN
Full-length Drama 5M (4 Caucasian, 1 Asian)
Unit Set
PORCELAIN is an examination of a young man's crime of passion. Triply
scorned -- as an Asian, a homosexual, and now a murderer—nineteen-year-old
John Lee has confessed to shooting his lover in a public lavatory in
London. A winner of the London Fringe Award for Best Play, PORCELAIN
dissects the crime through a prism of conflicting voices: newscasts,
flashbacks, and John's own recollections to a prison psychiatrist.
" A most remarkable achievement . . . A drama of racial grief,
generating the urgency of a thriller and the power of an archetype" –The
Times, London
"Cruel and tender, [PORCELAIN] moves and it shocks." –The London
Independent
"A crime of passion sets the stage for a gripping, gritty, graphic
voice poem about alienation. Riveting writing . . . Every word and every
image is as vivid and visual as the audience's imaginations allow." —Daily
Variety
A LANGUAGE OF THEIR OWN
Full-length Drama 4M (3 Asian, 1 Caucasian)
Unit Set
A LANGUAGE OF THEIR OWN is a lyrical and dramatic meditation on the nature
of love, desire, sexuality, and self-definition as four men come together
and drift apart in a series of interconnecting stories.
"Forty years ago, John Osborne in Look Back in Anger first drew
attention to the secret codes of lovers. Yew's beautifully written play
now suggests that the dots, dashes, and pauses of that code, the words and
gestures, their establishment and sometimes their erosion and final
collapse, are a metaphor for the course of the affair, indeed an allegory
of love. It's a thought, and exquisitely expressed." –The New York Post
A Language of Their Own is a seamless work that glides between
narrative and drama...notable for the way Chay Yew offers up tender
matters of the heart in strikingly universal terms. For those who care to
listen, A Language of Their Own easily crosses many prejudicial barriers
of race and sexuality."
–The Star-Ledger
"The characters [in Porcelain and A Language of Their Own] just want
what we all want: to be included. Yet society sets them apart because of
their ethnicity, their sexuality, or their HIV status. Their fate as
outsiders—rejection, isolation and loneliness—courses through the plays in
this collection, erupting in ways that are sometimes shockingly
unpleasant, sometimes surpassingly beautiful, sometimes both at once...The
language is nearly poetic—colorful, evocative, graphic,
exhilarating...Again and again, Yew's words and images sear themselves
into the brain." –The Los Angeles Daily News
WONDERLAND
Full-length Drama
Unit Set 3M, 1W (All Asian)
Through a movie pitch in a Hollywood studio, a film producer paints the
landscape of alienation, desire and ambition; an immigrant Asian woman,
her Asian-American husband, and their American son pursue the American
Dream, happiness and a place to call home.
“Yew creates vocal music . . . its confidence, darting movement from
poetic lyricism and intense emotion to street smarts . . . Wonderland
achieves an emotional truth . . . delivers a compelling and very often
original evening of theater.” –San Diego Union-Tribune
“A series of lyrical, tumultuous, and painful scenes in the lives of
three Chinese Americans . . . Wonderland’s monologues, duets, and trios
fold in on themselves, contracting, expanding, and creating a shimmering,
translucent beauty.”—Back Stage West/Drama-Logue
“A haunting play of tender, painful truths that uncover the dark
shadows beyond the deceptive brilliance of the California sun, the
Hollywood klieg lights and the beacon of Lady Liberty.” –KPBS
RED
Full-length Drama
Unit Set 1M, 2W (All Asian)
When Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution swept through China, the ancient,
glorious art form of Beijing Opera became a pawn in the dangerous game of
new politics versus traditions. For a man whose life plays out on the
stage and a woman caught up in the Revolution. The game has tragic
consequences. Only years later will they realize that art can withstand
the blows of history, and bonds may prove too strong to be broken.
“Written by Yew in response to censorship and budget cuts imposed on
the National Endowment for the Arts by a conservative congress...Red shows
a major talent, a man driven to delve into difficult themes. Yew writes
with wit, and with passion.”–Hartford Courant
“China’s Cultural Revolution of the 1960’s as a powerful metaphor for
American thought policing, particularly as embodied by congressional
attacks on the National Endowment for the Arts...A weighty undertaking,
but one beautifully distilled into three elegant, engaging characters.”
–USA Today
“Compact and elegant...[Red] deals compellingly with the inescapability
of the past.” –Variety
A BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY
Performance Work
Unit Set 4M, 4W (Asian and Non-Asian)
From the Los Angeles’ Negro Alley Massacre and the plight of Filipino
migrant workers, to the internment of Japanese Americans and the brutal
murder of Vincent Chin, immigrant drag queen Miss Visa Denied bares
witness to the provocative events that shape Asian-American history for
the past 160 years.
“A multi-media collage of funny, bittersweet and chilling vignettes...a
stirring examination of the Asian American experience over 150 years.” –LA
Weekly
“A powerful and fascinating piece of theatre” –Back Stage West/Drama-Logue