Cinderella and Frankenstein's Monster Are Dead
Role: Producer, Director, Playwright
Production History:
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2025 May, Lantern Theatre @ ACT, Brighton Fringe
Links:
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Tickets: Lantern Sales & Fringe Sales
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Listing: Visit Brighton, The List
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News: Broadway World, Sussex World, National World
Synopsis
昭兰 (Zhao Lan), a Chinese exchange student in an American high school, often finds herself lost in thoughts of Frankenstein’s monster. Like him, she feels out of place, unseen, unworthy, stitched together in a world that doesn’t quite fit her. When her school’s theatre club is casting for Cinderella, a Grimm Brothers fairytale, she sees the perfect opportunity to prove her worth. It was the first story she ever read in English. No one knows it better than she does. Yet even after she gets the role, she's still unhappy. Foreign stories glitch into nightmares. She misses the Mandarin rhyme she once proudly sang. It doesn’t take long for her to realize: Both Cinderella and Frankenstein's monster are dead. She's neither of them.
Production Photo
"Only one of those two were saved. But both of them are dead now."
Philomela
Role: Playwright
Directed by Kaitlyn Wigmore
Production History:
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2024 December, Rhapsody Riot Play Festival, Goldberg Theatre, NYU Tisch
Links:
Synopsis
Philly asks her dentist best friend Kate to look at her tongue at her bachelorette party. Troubled by hallucinations of eerie nightingale sounds, she confides in Kate about the huge scar on her tongue. Philly's tongue had fallen off before when her fiancé, John, tried to kiss her in middle school. Kate, while suppressing her love and attraction toward Philly, convinces her not to marry John. Soon she realizes her crush is reciprocated as Philly leans in to kiss her...despite carrying the weight of her past and the impending marriage.
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"Don’t be afraid. You don’t have another tongue to lose this time."
Rain Cycle
Role: Director
Written by Alex Isbell
Production History:
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2024 December, Broke People Play Festival, Goldberg Theatre, NYU Tisch
Links:
Synopsis
Rae finally visits Mom, who is sick from cancer and refuses to evacuate from her house despite an approaching storm. Rae knows this might be the last time they get to talk to each other, but she fights for more time. She wants an apology from Mom for putting her to work in the abusive film industry when she was just four years old. Mom, struggling to open up, going on and on about stoicism and reincarnation. The storm is almost on them. Dark of the clouds is pushing in, closing the distance. Neither of them chose to leave.
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"You’ve lived a million lives without me. You’ll live a million more."
Tide
Role: Producer, Director, Playwright, Sound Designer
Production History:
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2023 May, YK Pao Black Box Theatre, Shanghai
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2023 August, Hua Run Time Square T2 Black Box Theatre, Shanghai
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2024 August, Greenside George Street Lime Studio, Edinburgh Fringe
Links:
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Review: CGO Institute
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News: The Scotsman | Broadway World
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Magazine: The List | Femi Fringe
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Interview: Beyond the Curtain
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Spotlights: QR Review "Fringe Quickie" | QR Review "Getting Fringe Ready"
Synopsis
Love story of two girls exploring the trauma of sexual assault and familial loss in a silent retreat. The stage is a canvas with red, blue, and yellow smeared everywhere...leading up to a tender kiss, but with paint. Will they find inner peace as the natural world deteriorates and the past comes back to haunt the present? Will they have the courage for intimacy again when every attempt before leads to separation? Will they try to express their love when verbal expression is not allowed? The kiss between two women is never apolitical, free, and painless, but it's always beautiful.
Tide's most recent two-week run at Edinburgh Fringe received wonderful audience review, describing the show as "tender", "nuanced", "sincere", "a very gentle duet of lost and unrealised love", and "slow but graceful drama".
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"Kissing with paint in silence."
Arachne
Role: Director, Playwright
Production History:
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2024 May, NYU Production Lab Incubator Series, La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, New York
Press:
Synopsis
A woman named Arachne returns to her mother's house after the funeral. She saw a spider just before she left, it brings her back to the nights when her mother would teach her how to knit with red yarn. Yet those knitting classes are not filled with love, but with pain and abuse... Loosely parallel to the Greek mythology of Arachne, the show is a contemporary and feminist adaptation. While the original story focuses more about jealousy and competition, this brand new version is an exploration of the love, connection, and familial love despite generational trauma.
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"You were hanging there from your web. Not making any sound. Simply…weaving."
Waiting for Godot
Role: Producer, Director
Production History:
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2023 May, YK Pao Black Box Theatre, Shanghai
Synopsis
Two tramps, Estragon and Vladimir, are waiting on the side of a country road for a man called Godot. They talk about hanging themselves, leaves, carrots, religion, life crisis. But Godot never comes but two other guys called Pozzo and Lucky show up. Pozzo is Lucky’s master, and they seem to have a loving past that turned abusive. Time passes by, but the question remains: will Godot ever come?
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"Well, shall we go?" "Yes, let go."
Jane Eyre: Life at Lowood
Role: Producer, Director
Production History:
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2023 March, YK Pao Amphitheatre Theatre, Shanghai
Synopsis
A creative adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s "Jane Eyre" with a focus on the heroine's life after she leaves her Aunt Reed’s household and joins an institution called “Lowood”. At Lowood, Jane learns not only about hardships, but also about fairies, fantasies, mountain streams, and separated lovers. The whole show is a collage of different moments with reference to the traditional Chinese folklore "Butterfly Lovers".
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"I saw myself crossing the fence, stepping my feet onto that road. The way it twists and flows gave me an illusion of freedom."
