Mining Gold: Finding the Treasures in Family Stories
Y.T. Sue and Sue Chung Kee, my great-uncle and great-grandfather at Sue Chung Kee's general store, Hanford, CA.
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Whether or not your family members are gone, you’ve heard the stories at the kitchen table, while at a family reunion, or even a side comment when unexpected. How do you find out more? How do you piece these tidbits together? Where do you go to fill in the gaps? This panel presentation will include some interactive dialogue with the audience and between audience members. Come mine gold in your family! With Nancy Wang and Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo of Eth-Noh-Tec and Eugenie Chan of Eugenie Chan Theater Projects. Oakland Asian Cultural Center 388 9th St., Oakland CA 94607 May 17, 2019 6:30-8 pm Click here to RSVP. |
Support free theater in our communities!
Help ECTP bring our new vaudeville -- Chan Family Picnic
to Chinatown and the Mission!
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A Big Thank You to New & Returning Supporters for Helping ECTP Reach our 2018 Fundraising Goal! Arianne Wing Beau Leonhart Bruce Barthol Camille Wing Cecil Castellucci Chris & Claudia Alexander Chris Weidman Christine & Wing Gee Christine Young Damon Wing Deanna Matsumoto Diann Leo-Omine Elaine Chan The Gee Family Foundation Isaiah Dufort Jane Weidman Jean Rosenblatt Joseph Ng JT Rogers Keith Lee & Elaine Lou Ken Prestininzi Leland Chan Leslie Li Lester & Nancy Chan Mame Hunt Marsha Chan & Terry Yang Michael Navarra Monica McCormick Nicole Stanton Paige Rogers Pius Meyer RHE Foundation Stephanie Chan Wendy Lee |
Jue Quon Tai (Rose Eleanor Jue), a vaudeville performer on the Orpheum Circuit) in 1915. wikipedia.org
Tin Hau Temple, Waverly Street, San Francisco Chinatown, where my great-grandfather was a member
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In 2019, ECTP will present the first public reading of Chan Family Picnic: A New Vaudeville (CFP) written by Eugenie and composed by amazing composer Byron Au Yong (Stuck Elevator, A.C.T.) at the Chinese Historical Society of America Museum in San Francisco. CFP brings together the past and present of six generations of my San Francisco Chinese American family through stories about my grandfather and me as we try to reach for respectable society’s highest echelons and try to break free from their family’s history as Gold Rush sex traffickers – complete with song, dance, and lotsa variety acts. In 2020, we will debut free community performances of CFP at the San Francisco Mime Troupe Studio in SF’s Mission District and Chinatown’s Cameron House. |
And thank you for telling ECTP why community performances matter --
We received powerful feedback on Madame Ho, performed at Cameron House in October 2017.
“I'm grateful for the opportunity to attend Madame Ho. It evoked emotions that I needed to surface, and in the familiar surroundings of Cameron House, my second home in Chinatown in the 1940s, during the Q & A my tongue was freed to say '#metoo.' Thank you all for making history come alive and reinforcing my feelings to continue giving back, to help make positive differences as a resident of the community.”
-- Dorothy G.C. Quock, 86-year old Chinatown native and activist
“I'm grateful for the opportunity to attend Madame Ho. It evoked emotions that I needed to surface, and in the familiar surroundings of Cameron House, my second home in Chinatown in the 1940s, during the Q & A my tongue was freed to say '#metoo.' Thank you all for making history come alive and reinforcing my feelings to continue giving back, to help make positive differences as a resident of the community.”
-- Dorothy G.C. Quock, 86-year old Chinatown native and activist
2018 -- the Year of the Dog was a Great Year!
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I joined a panel of theater artists of color at The Playwrights Foundation to talk about ways we can decolonize U.S. theater to make it a more equitable and inclusive site of artistic creation and community engagement. The Foundation is a treasure that supports the new work of Bay Area and national playwrights.
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Ohlone College commissioned me to write a full-length play for their hugely talented and diverse students to be performed Fall 2019 at Ohlone and beyond. Ohlone features a full-on performing arts department. Public education at its finest.
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Spending the End of the World on Ok Cupid
by Bay Area playwright & director Jeffrey Lo, Ohlone College, November 2016
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Working on Chan Family Picnic with fabulous composer Byron Au Yong in June 11 - 15, 2018. Thank you, Byron and Arts Montalvo!
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So lucky to have been invited by Arts Montalvo, an incredible artists residency in Saratoga, California. to spend a week working on Chan Family Picnic.
Poets Monica de la Torre and Julian Talamantez Broleski sign chapbooks at Arts Montalvo after their reading. |
Celebrating 6NewPlays!So thrilled to have been a part of 6NewPlays, a collective of Bay Area producing playwrights who helped make Madame Ho such a success at the EXIT Theater and Cameron House.
Our goal in late 2014 was to produce 6 brave new plays in 3 years and we did it! The Plays -- Home Invasion by Christopher Chen dark is a different beast by Andrea Hart That It All Makes Perfect by Erin Bregman Madame Ho by Eugenie Chan Champagne by Barry Eitel Wakefield by Brian Thorstenson |
(L-R) Andrea Hart, Brian Thorstenson, Erin Bregman, me, Christopher Chen, Barry Eitel. (Back row: fellow revelers.)
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Chan Family Picnic was a New England Foundation for the Arts National Theater Project Finalist. So honored!
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Peregrine, the Artist was part of the 2018 Ohlone Playwrights Festival of New Plays. A celebration of world premiere short plays by a diverse and exciting roster of playwrights and student artists. Peregrine, the Artist by Eugenie Chan Directed by Athena Benevides Cast: Mina Baldovino, Stephanie Cuevas, Erica Peralez, William To |
(Mina Baldovino as Peregrine, William To as Perry, Erica Peralez as Typist) For photos of the cast, click here.
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I taught a playwriting workshop at the jam-packed Great Plains Theater Conference. You know you want to write a play... |
Courtesy Bancroft Library
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"Chinese sex slaves' origin in Gold Rush"San Francisco Chronicle columnist Gary Kamiya's 2018 article "Chinese sex slaves' origin in Gold Rush" in Portals of the Past, is personally relevant to my family as it mentions the now defunct Hip Yee Tong, the first organization to infamously traffic sex slaves in San Francisco in 1852 -- and the subject of Chan Family Picnic, my Gum Saan Trilogy's second play. |
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The Chinese Historical Society of America toured their in-depth exhibit on the historical impact of racial restrictions in housing on Chinese and other people of color in the Sunset. I contributed an oral history about my parents struggle to live there. My parents tried to buy their first home in the Sunset in the early 1960s, but covenant laws prevented that from happening. Doors were slammed in their faces. "We don't sell to your kind," they were told. The Sunset is also the setting for Kitchen Table, the third play of the Gum Saan Trilogy. Thanks to the activism of our forbears, San Francisco has changed. You can read about the exhibit in Chronicle writer Carl Nolte's 2018 Native Son column, "Lee the face of a new, enlightened SF". |
"Chinese in the Sunset"an exhibit by the Chinese Historical Society of America
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2017 -- The Year of the Rooster was amazing!
Ho (Bonnie Akimoto) and Bo (Mimu Tsujimura) whoop it up!
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For making ECTP's run of Madame Ho at the Exit Theater and Cameron House this fall such an enormous success! With sold-out houses and moving, vibrant post-show discussions, we couldn't ask for anything more. "Behind Asian Eyes"...
Read what author and San Francisco Chronicle columnist Vanessa Hua has to say about race and representation in America in her article, "Behind Asian Eyes, A World of Possibility." |
Tune into KPFA'S APEX EXPRESS: Miko Lee interviewed Eugenie on
Madame Ho, trafficking, and the making of San Francisco.
KPFA 94.1 FM Berkeley, California. Live-streaming at www.kpfa
Madame Ho, trafficking, and the making of San Francisco.
KPFA 94.1 FM Berkeley, California. Live-streaming at www.kpfa
Free community performancesof Madame Hoin Chinatownat Cameron House!October 28, 2017 at 5 pm
October 29, 2017 at 1 pm & 7 pm ECTP was honored to be able to provide free community performances at Donaldina Cameron House, a bilingual social service agency empowering San Francisco's Chinatown community to live healthy, thriving lives.
Cameron House originally began in 1847 as the Occidental Mission Home for Girls, to help exploited Chinese immigrant women sold into prostitution. In 1942, it was renamed in honor of Donaldina Cameron, a young Presbyterian woman who made it her mission, along with founder Margaret Culbertson, in the 1890's to help, educate, and house these vulnerable women. It is likely that my great-grandmother, being a madam, had to confront the zeal of Miss Cameron. History comes full circle with this production. |
Donaldina Cameron on a rescue mission in SF Chinatown.
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Madame Ho at the EXIT Theatre
Bonnie Akimoto as Madame Ho. Photo: Frank Jang
Madame Ho thanks you for the fabulous run at the EXIT!
We loved having you in the house... Come back any ole time!
We loved having you in the house... Come back any ole time!
An Interview with Eugenie
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KZYX&Z’s host Blake More of XXWhy's program on women in the arts talked to me about Madame Ho, Chinese immigration to the West, women’s roles at that time, sex trafficking, underground economies, and family secrets. KZYX&Z 90.7 FM Philo, 88.1 FM Fort Bragg, 91.5 FM Willits and live-streamed on the web at www.kxyx.org. |
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Daisy (Lisa Hori-Garcia), Mui (Christine Jamlig)
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San Jose Mercury News'Critic's Pick of the Week!See Madame Ho's daughter Daisy tempt fate when she consorts with Mui, the servant girl...
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"What you want?!" And when you're coming to see her and her women...
Madame Ho
by Eugenie Chan at the Exit Theater 156 Eddy St. San Francisco, CA 94102 October 5 - 21, 2017 Thursday, Friday, Saturday evenings at 8 pm Saturday matinees at 2 pm $20 online, $25 at the door |
Keiko Shimosato Carreiro as Crow, Bonnie Akimoto as Ho
See Bonnie Akimoto as Ho. And watch her sidekick Crow, played by Keiko Carreiro,
egg her on! See the rest of our amaaaaaazing cast! |
Keep up-to-date with Madame Ho's rehearsal on her blog. Click here to see the amazing talent in the show!
At rehearsal, Alan Yip, Madame Ho's musician and sound effects magician (no computer-generated sound for Ho!) demos his erhu. We are all spellbound. (L-R: Jessica Heidt, Leanna Keyes, Mimu Tsujimura, Bonnie Akimoto, Alan Yip, Byron Au Yong)
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Madame Ho and ECTP's October Exit Theater and Cameron House production has been honored with the 2017 Rella Lossy Award!
And Madame Ho is a San Francisco Chronicle Fall Theater Pick! Check out what Broadway World is saying about her!
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Courtesy, UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library
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Inspired by the life of Eugenie’s great-grandmother, Madame Ho tells the story of a formidable Barbary Coast, San Francisco brothel madam, single mother, Chinese immigrant, and ghost. A tale of of survival and complicity. Directed by Jessica Heidt With Bonnie Akimoto, Rinabeth Apostol, Lily Tung Crystal, Lisa Hori-Garcia, Christine Jamlig, Keiko Shimosato Carreiro, Mimu Tsujimura, and erhu musician Alan Yip. Songs by Byron Au Yong. |
in new anthology!The Laborer's monologue from Madame Ho is one of 97 monologues from this anthology culled from the Kilroy's List of new plays by women and trans writers. What an honor to be in such inspiring company.
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Who are these crazy vaudevillians?
Click here and find out!
Chan Family Picnic begins its vaudeville life at Berkeley Rep's 2017 Ground Floor Theater Lab.
Chan Family Picnic begins its vaudeville life at Berkeley Rep's 2017 Ground Floor Theater Lab.
Bonnie Akimoto, Rinabeth Apostol, Lily Tung Crystal, Lisa Hori-Garcia, Christine Jamlig, Keiko Shimosato Carreiro, Mimu Tsujimura, and erhu player Alan Yip. Jessica Heidt directs. Songs composed by Byron Au Yong. Scenic design by Randy Wong-Westbrooke. Lighting Design by Allen Willmer. Costume Design by Keiko Shimosato Carreiro. Prop Design by Hector Zavala.
My playwright peers John Bernson, Sharon Bridgforth, Amy Freed, Anne Galjour, Garret Jon Groenveld, Dipika Guha, Lauren Gunderson, Mark Jackson, Geetha Reddy, Andrew Saito, Jonathan Spector, and I tell it like it is in the Bay. "How the San Francisco Bay Area Affects the Playwrights who Live There" by SF native and fellow scribe, Peter Nachtrieb.
Eugenie and New York playwrights Julia Jarcho, Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas, and Deborah Stein talk about the challenges and rewards of writing and producing plays with Andy Bragen in a podcast from ND: In Depth.
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Word for Word and LitQuake present Selections from The Woman Warrior and China Men by Maxine Hong Kingston Directed by Eugenie Chan 7 p.m. Monday, October 10, 2016 Z Space Main Stage Admission is Free An Off the Page Reading |
The original Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston, and the wannabe warrior, Eugenie Chan, at Word for Word and LitQuake's reading, to honor Maxine as a Barbary Coast Awardee.
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L-R: Gwen Loeb, Monica Ho, Mimu Tsujimura, Katherine Chin, Lisa Hori-Garcia, Mia Tagano, Erin Mei-Ling Stuart, Maggie Wong. Behind the women, Randall Nakano, Ogie Zulueta (Photo by Frank Jang)
With thanks to the many individuals and foundations that support us.
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We are a member of Intersection for the Arts. Intersection for the Arts is a historic arts nonprofit that provides people working in arts and culture with fiscal sponsorship and resources to grow.