Kyoung Update: Chile, New York, Portland, Seoul

Dear friends,

Greetings from New York! I’m thrilled to share with you exciting news about Kyoung’s Pacific Beat’s upcoming season. We are kicking it off with a jam-packed calendar of activities in October and I hope you’ll be able to join us through our journey.

Pillowtalk--Post Gay Marriage Politics, a long-table hosted by Kyoung's Pacific Beat at the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies "After Marriage" Conference.

PILLOWTALK
Kyoung’s Pacific Beat’s new work-in-progress, PILLOWTALK, is currently in development for a workshop production and World Premiere in 2017. PILLOWTALK explores the intersections of racial and queer politics, asking whether queer communities of color can truly celebrate marriage equality in the times of #BlackLivesMatter.

We are honored to be part of the Center of Lesbian and Gay Studies’ “After Marriage” Conference, an urgent public conversation which will convene activists, funders, and academics in order to explore possible agendas for LGBTQ politics and scholarship after marriage.

On Saturday, Oct. 1st, Kyoung’s Pacific Beat will be hosting “Pillowtalk—Post Gay Marriage Politics,” a long-table conversation exploring the major issues explored in PILLOWTALK. The long-table will be moderated by Stephanie Hsu (Assistant Professor of English and Gender & Women’s Studies at Pace University, board member of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies and the NY Association for Gender Rights Advocacy) and feature playwright Beto O’Byrne, visual artist Tahir Karmali, Bryan Glover (Founder of Harlem9), and the lead artists of PILLOWTALK—Raja Feather Kelly, Daniel K. Isaac, and Kyoung H. Park

Following our Long-Table, we will share a video excerpt of PILLOWTALK in this year’s PRELUDE Festival at CUNY’s Martin E. Segal Theater Center on Friday, Oct. 7th. “Welcome Failure” is the theme of this year’s PRELUDE, and in a space that is gathering NYC’s creative community to talk about spaces of failure, we are excited to unpack the challenges and possibilities of creating our work.

WOVEN–an anti-violence campaign.

CREATING PEACE
Kyoung’s Pacific Beat’s mission is to promote a culture of peace and non-violence. If you live in New York City, you may have noticed WOVEN’s anti-violence campaign, which has been placed all around the city in commemoration of the UN’s International Day of Peace. We are honored to be part of this exciting campaign, which has also welcomed us to be part of a growing community of peacemakers at a local, national, and international level. We look forward to deepening our relationships with a peacemaking community that is proactively pursuing positive peace strategies around the world.

As our company grows in visibility, we have repeatedly been asked how Kyoung’s Pacific Beat makes it work to create peace. Encountering people truly searching for solutions in response to these horrible times of violence, I am testing out a new initiative called CREATING PEACE, and will have our first, public event engaging with this question in Portland, Oregon. CREATING PEACE THROUGH ART is a free, public talk, which will take place at the Multnomah County Library on Sun., Oct. 2nd and is part of “Hot Asian Everything: A Seismic Exhibition.”

EQUITY AND INCLUSION IN THE ARTS
While the work of Kyoung’s Pacific Beat celebrates the innate diversity and global perspectives that shape New York’s cultural landscape, it is also necessary within our field to highlight the need to address cultural conservatism in order to serve the needs of artists and communities of color, which have been left marginalized by major cultural institutions.

Observatorio Cultural, an online publication from Chile's National Council for the Arts

As part of The Field’s Leadership Fund Fellowship, I have been exploring the multiple ways we can create systemic change to address the need for cultural equity and inclusion in the arts. In the wake of on-going racist, xenophobic, and vitriolic hatred in America, I am happy toshare some of the tools, skills, projects, and initiatives that I’m hoping will make a change.

  • “Devising Outside the Box” is a workshop I’ve designed to provide a framework and infrastructure for the creation of devised theater, in order to establish artistic collaborations, build community, and address ownership in order to balance the creative generation of material with the planning necessary to support artistic collaborations. This workshop will take place Monday, Oct. 3rd at “Seismic Shifts,” the fifth National Asian American Theater Conference & Festival taking place at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon.
  • I’m proud to be a co-founding member of “The Sol Project,” a new theater initiative raising the visibility of Latina/o Playwrights in the American Theater. After two years of planning and organizing, it is thrilling to know the work championed through this initiative will begin to be staged in a synergistic network of off-Broadway theater companies.
  • The Chilean National Council for the Arts online magazine, “Observatorio Cultural,” has asked me to write about my recent collaboration with GAM to create “K-ONDA HAMLET” with local, Korean-pop dancing, teenagers in Santiago, Chile. My essay, “Nuevas Prácticas de la Junventud Chilena. Danzas K-pop: Los Próximos Pasos” is available online in Spanish. An English version will be available December 2016 and can be requested via email at [email protected].

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA
I will be traveling to Seoul, South Korea next month. Please let me know if you’re available to meet Oct. 18-21st via email at [email protected].

Peace,

Kyoung

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