Kristina Wong
Kristina Wong was featured in The New York Times’ Off Color series “highlighting artists of color who use humor to make smart social statements about the sometimes subtle, sometimes obvious ways that race plays out in America today.” She is a performance artist, comedian, and writer who has presented across North America, the UK, and Hong Kong. Her most notable touring show, “Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, looks at the high rates of depression and suicide among Asian American women and has toured dozens of venues across the United States since 2006. It’s now a broadcast-quality film distributed by Cinema Libre Studios.
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Rules of Wong: A Career Overview Talk on the Work of Kristina Wong (monologue/keynote)
A career chat with Kristina Wong about agency and innovation as a successful independent professional theater artist. Kristina will share how theatre can inform and sustain a career in any profession, not only performing artists.
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Reality Television, Political Theater, and Social Change (monologue/keynote)
Kristina Wong is a performance artist, comedian and elected representative whose work onstage and in politics is informed by an obsessive knowledge of the reality television format. How does reality tv explain where we are today? What tropes from this genre have now surfaced in how we think, make decisions and move in the world?
In this talk she will describe her research, brushes with reality television and how she’s played with the form in her activism and art for the benefit of social justice.
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Kristina Wong for Public Office (monologue/keynote or performance)
Kristina Wong is an actual elected representative of Koreatown, Los Angeles and Kristina Wong for Public Office is a 65 minute comedic performance that crosses the aesthetics of campaign rallies, church revivals, and solo theater shows to tell the story of what it means to run for local office, the history of voting, and the impact artists can have on democracy. The show comments on the real anxiety of the state of our democracy by touring alongside the debates, shenanigans, and rallies leading up to the November 2020 election. It’s a show that will get audiences amped up about civic engagement, get them registered to vote, and give civic organizations a chance to partner with your venue. The show plays against a charming hand-sewn felt set designed and created by Kristina Wong.
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Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (enhanced monologue/keynote)
Kristina share excerpts from her landmark show “Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” a show looking at the high rates of depression and suicide among Asian American women that she toured for eight years across the country. With her trademark humor and wit, she shares some insight on these statistics and what she learned in the process of touring this work.
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Auntie Sewing Squad: Radical Care, Social Justice, and Mask Making During COVID19 (monologue/keynote)
Performance artist and comedian Kristina Wong shares her pandemic journey from out of work performer to unlikely leader of the Auntie Sewing Squad, a national mask sewing collective that formed at the top of the pandemic to distribute cloth masks to the most vulnerable of communities left behind by the Federal Government’s neglect during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Connecting the history of this sewing to Chinese Americans immigrating to America and the undervalued work of garment workers globally, the Auntie Sewing Squad reflects a new model for care, community and allyship in times of crisis.
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Making Theater with Formerly Incarcerated APIs (monologue/keynote and screening)
Excerpt screenings of “From Number to Name” with commentary on process from Kristina Wong.
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Going Green the Wong Way (enhanced monologue/keynote)
Going Green the Wong Way brings our contemporary urban environment to life, revealing just how tricky it is to “do the right thing.” Based on Wong’s true-life adventures, but elevated to surrealist heights, the performance excerpt and keynote takes us from Kristina’s confrontational 6th grade science project, to her wandering years as a missionary of recycling, to her true calling as Los Angeles’ patron martyr of carbon-free living.
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Kristina Wong: #FoodBankInfluencer (new work-in-progress performance)
Prepare for this sneak preview of Pulitzer Finalist Kristina Wong’s newest work-in-process!
During the historic joint labor strikes of SAG-AFTRA and the WGA in summer 2023, Kristina partnered with food bank World Harvest to provide free groceries to actors and writers until the end of the strike.
In the new show, she will be creatively intervening with the food bank as:
- An Immersive Experience
- A functional food bank
- A commentary on systems and distribution
- A treatise on food insecurity
- An illustration of how AI will impact humans, particularly those working in the arts
Immediately following the performance, the audience will engage in discussion and feedback with Kristina Wong about this topic and her work in process. Contributions from the audience may very well find their way into Kristina’s world premiere of the finished work at ASU Gammage in Spring 2025!
See Kristina Wong in action.
Can you challenge political apathy, mental health, and income inequality and STILL LAUGH? Sure you can! Kristina will show you!
(Writer/ Performer, she/her) is a performance artist, actor, comedian, writer and former elected official in Koreatown Los Angeles. Following its highly acclaimed premiere at New York Theatre Workshop, Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord, was a New York Times “Critics Pick.” Wong was then named a Pulitzer Prize finalist in Drama (2022). Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord also garnered a veritable awards sweep this year including The Drama Desk Award, The Lucille Lortel Award, and The Outer Critics Circle Award.
Wong’s work has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Doris Duke Artist Award. Wong’s other works have been presented across North America, the UK, Hong Kong, and Africa. She’s been a guest on late night shows on Comedy Central, NBC, and FX. As a published writer, Wong’s work is included in Routledge’s Contemporary Plays by Women of Color. Wong wrote the introduction for The Auntie Sewing Squad Guide To Mask Making, Radical Care, and Racial Justice published by University of California Press. She also had Artist Residencies at MacDowell, Hermitage, Montalvo, and Ojai Playwrights Festival. She’s also received support from Creative Capital, The MAP Fund, Center for Cultural Innovation, National Performance Network, a COLA Master Artist Fellowship from the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, nine Los Angeles Artist-in-Residence awards, Center Theatre Group’s Sherwood Award, the Art Matters Foundation, and the Joan D. Firestone Commission from En Garde Arts. She is currently developing a new work during her three-year Artist-in-Residence at ASU Gammage and as a Social Practice Fellow at the Kennedy Center. Other major projects include Wong Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Going Green The Wong Way, The Wong Street Journal, and Kristina Wong for Public Office. Other career highlights include the Visionary Award from East West Players, “Local Hero Of The Year” nominee from KCET/PBS, Asian Pacific Honoree from Fuse TV, and the Best Of Arts Los Angeles issue from LA Weekly.
Our speakers get attention.
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Comedian Kristina Wong on Crafting a Community During COVIDWhen the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the performing arts world, comedian Kristina Wong found herself adrift.
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For SF native Kristina Wong, Covid project becomes a hit comedy showWhen the going gets tough, the tough get sewing. That may be the lesson of “Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord,” the acclaimed solo show now playing at American Conservatory Theater’s Strand…
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How San Francisco prepared this actor for a career in arts and activismKristina Wong has many fond memories of growing up in San Francisco’s Sunset District, but middle school is nowhere near those lovely recollections.
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This comedian just won a $550,000 prize. Up next: A boundary-pushing Culver City showPart of the world may have moved on from COVID-19, but performance artist Kristina Wong is reliving the worst of the pandemic.
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Kristina Wong assembled ‘aunties’ to sew masks. Her pandemic mission is now a must-see showPerformance artist, comedian and community activist Kristina Wong is delivering the pandemic debriefing I didn’t know how badly I needed.
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KRISTINA WONG, SWEATSHOP OVERLORD Added to La Jolla Playhouse 2022/2023 seasonThe piece will replace Mother Russia, which is now tentatively planned for the Playhouse’s 2023/2024 season.
