About the Playwright

ABO UTTHE PLAYWRIGHT

Ll oyd Suh

Pla ywrigh t Ll oyd Suh excavates ignored, pivotal moments of Asian American history, exploring them in a variety of forms and aesthetics, from historical realism and punk rock musicals to sci-fi plays and comedies for young audiences. He has brought to life the story of America’s first female Chinese immigrant and carnival attraction, Afong Moy, and is currently grappling with the legacy of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. He has re-imagined https://herbalpertawards.org/artist/2019/lloyd-suh

the “lost years” of Jesus of Nazareth journeying in the East and, via a murder mystery featuring the fictional detective Charlie Chan, considered the history and politics of yellowface, the emerging Asian American identity of the 1960’s, and the work of pioneering Chinese American playwright Frank Chin. As Director of Artistic Programs at The Lark, a leading new play laboratory, he is an advocate for new works and a mentor to many Asian American writers.

Awards: New York Foundation of the Arts Fellowship 2004 for playwriting New York Foundation of the Arts Fellowship 2016 for playwriting New York State Council on the Arts Individual Artist grant 2005 for American Hwangap Off-Broadway Alliance Award for Best Family Show 2014 for The Wong Kids… 2014 American Alliance for Theatre & Education Distinguished Play Award for The Wong Kids… non Ma-Yi productions of Lab developed work: Jesus in India – Magic Great Wall Story - Denver Center American Hwangap - Magic, CCP?, PCPA in Seoul, Halcyon/A-Squared

Lloyd Suh talks to Milwaukee Rep about the process of creating The Chinese Lady:

“Lately, over the past several years, they’ve been doing this deep dive in the Asian American History. I read a, just a little blurb, it was like a sentence about Afong Moy umm and it just it – sparked something in my imagination. And it wasn’t an idea yet, it took a long time for that to turn into ah – a play umm… Just that navigation of having to perform an expectation of who you are – um of having an awareness of how people see you and what they expect the performance of your activity to be and how that might differ from who you really are but also how that might influence who you ultimately become. You know there is a lot more information about what happened when she was at the height of popularity but then there is very very little that umm corresponds with anything that happened later. And it was once I started to wrestle with why there is so little after a certain point that’s when the play really began to form. That’s when I realized, ‘Oh that’s what this play is about.’”