Events Calendar

Creating Art: History and Society as Inspiration

Admission is free.

An inspiring conversation will address women’s voices in society and the arts with performer Haerry Kim, director Natsuko Ohama, playwright Velina Hasu Houston, performing-arts critic Meiling Cheng and visual artist Chang-Jin Lee. They will address contemporary and historical issues related to Asian and Asian American women and the power of the arts in giving voice to social issues.

About the Panelists:

Meiling Cheng has taught a variety of courses at USC in theatre history, dramatic literature, contemporary kinesthetic theatre and live art and visual and cultural studies. Cheng is a noted performance-art critic and poet and has published widely in both English and Chinese. Her first book, In Other Los Angeleses: Multicentric Performance Art, received a Junior Faculty Award from the Southern California Studies Center and the Zumberge Individual Research Grant from USC. She received a Guggenheim fellowship for her current book project, Beijing Xingwei. Since 2004, Cheng has published a series of groundbreaking articles in the U.S., U.K. and Australia, on performance art (translated as xingwei yishu) and installation (zhuangzhi yishu) in China’s post-Mao era. She has also presented numerous talks on Chinese experimental art in Singapore, London, Boston, Providence, Chicago, Toronto and New York. (Bio)

Velina Hasu Houston’s most popular work is her critically acclaimed play Tea. It and many of her other works have been presented internationally, garnering more than three dozen writing awards. Her other acclaimed plays include Asa Ga Kimashita, Kokoro, The Matsuyama Mirror, Hula Heart, Ikebana (Living Flowers), Shedding the Tiger and Waiting for Tadashi. She has been recognized three times by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and twice selected as a Rockefeller Foundation playwriting fellow. She was a recipient of a Japan Foundation fellowship and a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Foundation grant. She was chosen as the inaugural recipient of the Remy Martin New Vision Award from Sidney Poitier and the American Film Institute. Houston is also a published poet and essayist and writes for film, radio and television. She edited the anthologies The Politics of Life: Four Plays by Asian American Women and But Still, Like Air, I’ll Rise: New Asian American Plays. She is a professor in the USC School of Dramatic Arts. (Official website)

Haerry Kim is a founding member and the artistic director of ETS Theater Company (established in 2009) and a full-time lecturer at Kookmin University in Seoul, South Korea. She received an MFA in acting from Columbia University. With ETS (Eye to Soul), she has created three full-length original plays: FACE, Serve God: Sounds of Nightingales and Bathtub Play. Her one-woman play FACE has been presented at the 2011 World Festival of National Theaters at the National Theater of Korea (Seoul), HERE Arts Center (New York), the sixth soloNOVA Festival (New York), the Berkshire Fringe Festival (Massachusetts) and the 2010 Edinburgh Festival Fringe (Scotland) to critical acclaim.

Chang-Jin Lee is a Korean-born conceptual artist who lives in New York City. Her recent work includes the multimedia installation Comfort Women Wanted, for which she interviewed comfort women from South Korea, China, Indonesia, Taiwan and the Netherlands. She has exhibited extensively, including at the Incheon Women Artists’ Biennale (Korea), Bo Pi Liao Contemporary (Taiwan) and the Queens Museum of Art (New York). She is a recipient of numerous awards including the New York State Council on the Arts Grant, the Asian Cultural Council Fellowship, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Grant, the Franconia Sculpture Park Jerome Fellowship, the Asian Women Giving Circle Award and the New York Foundation for the Arts Fiscal Sponsorship Award. (Official website)

Natsuko Ohama is one of the premier voice teachers in the country. She is a founding member and permanent faculty of Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Massachusetts. She has taught at numerous institutions, including New York University, the California Institute of the Arts, the Wooster Group, Columbia University, the Sundance Institute, the New Actors Workshop, the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario and the National Arts Centre of Canada. She is also a Drama Desk Award–nominated actress. She is a recipient of the Playwrights’ Arena Award for Outstanding Contribution to Los Angeles Theatre and appears in the recent publication Voice and Speech Training in the New Millennium (Conversations with Master Teachers) by Nancy Saklad. She heads the voice progression for the MFA Acting Program at USC. (Official website)

Related Events:

FACE: A Performance by Haerry Kim
Friday, February 8, 7 p.m.
24th Street Theatre
1117 24th Street, Los Angeles
For more info, click here.

Finding Voice: From Story to Performance
Saturday, February 9, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Parkside Performance Café, International Parkside Residential College
For more info, click here.

Organized by Natsuko Ohama (Dramatic Arts). Co-sponsored by Kookmin University (Seoul, South Korea).

For further information on this event:
visionsandvoices@usc.edu

Location: Edward L. Doheny Jr. Memorial Library (DML) - Doheny Memorial Library 240

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Daria Yudacufski