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Kristina Wong.<\/p>\n
NEW YORK CITY:<\/strong> En Garde Arts<\/a> has named playwright Kristina Wong<\/a> the primary recipient of the Joan D. Firestone Commissioning Award<\/a>. Wong will obtain an unrestricted $18,000 grant to work on the intersection of theatre and social change. Firestone, a longtime En Garde Arts chairperson and board member, not too long ago established a five-year fund in her identify to award mid-career artists. The grant shall be awarded yearly. <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m absolutely honored to receive this support from the Joan D. Firestone Fund as I kickstart my ambitious new project, #FoodBankinfluencer<\/em>, with Indigenous communities,\u201d mentioned Wong, a Pulitzer Prize finalist<\/a> for the play Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord<\/em>, in an announcement. \u201cIt\u2019s so exciting that this funding can further both ambitious progress in the health of these communities I\u2019ll be working with and be the critical backbone to my newest theatre work.\u201d<\/p>\n For #FoodBankInfluencer<\/em>, Wong will work with strategists in \u201cfood deserts\u201d to reimagine the grocery retailer, meals financial institution, and group fridge as an immersive theatre surroundings. The work will try to cue more healthy instincts of consumption and self-determination, and Wong will work with Indigenous communities she first met with the Auntie Sewing Squad as she created her Sweatshop Overlord<\/em> play. Wong will use the Firestone Commissioning Award to pay a group of seamstresses in Dinnebito<\/a>, a rural space of the Navajo Nation in Arizona, to stitch a brand new inside for a market to resemble a Native buying and selling put up.<\/p>\n Wong was chosen by a nominating committee made up of creator and educator Kim Bendheim, former New York Theatre Workshop<\/a> affiliate creative director Linda Chapman, Tony-winning playwright David Henry Hwang<\/a>, two-time Pulitzer-winning playwright Lynn Nottage<\/a>, Hamburger, and Firestone. <\/p>\n Wong, a comic, author, and performer, is finest recognized for the one-woman play Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord<\/em>, which along with its Pulitzer nod received the Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, and Lucille Lortel Awards for Outstanding Solo Performance. Wong is the founding father of the Auntie Sewing Squad<\/a>, a nationwide guide assist community of volunteers who sewed fabric masks for susceptible communities on the onset of the COVID pandemic; their work was the impetus for Sweatshop Overlord<\/em>. Wong is presently the artist in residence on the Arizona State University Gammage<\/a> theatre program, and is the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts<\/a> Social Practice Resident.<\/p>\n Wong will obtain the Firestone Commissioning Award at a gala at Ideal Glass Studios on Dec. 8. The gala may even honor playwright Sarah Ruhl and John Clinton Eisner, former creative director of The Lark. En Garde Arts will host the primary public studying of Wong\u2019s work ensuing from the Firestone Commissioning Award throughout the subsequent 18 months, and can maintain no rights to future productions of the work.<\/p>\n En Garde Arts creates, produces, and presents daring theatrical experiences that attain throughout creative, bodily, and social boundaries. As of 2020, their funds was roughly $459,700.<\/p>\n