Purple  Cloud   By  Jessica  Huang  |  Directed  by  Sam  Sagan  '18

  • STATIC | "It tells the story of a family lineage that finds itself in America, and the tribulations that each generation endures with regard to assimilation, heritage, and finding community in endlessly antagonistic spaces. The play is a collection of stories rarely told. It is reminiscent of struggles that run through bloodlines and the gestation of incomprehensible identities."
  • ​The Stanford Daily | "Purple Cloud... slices and probes into every aspect of identity in order to discover what it means to be a "hapa"... as the characters conflict with ideas that their “parts” fail to make a complete whole, they develop a message of hope for any individual who has ever struggled with finding their own sense of belonging."

Caught  By  Christopher  Chen  |  Directed  By  Daniel  Cai  '19

  • Stanford Arts Review | "You are not sure if the play has started or even who is part of the play—is the “artist” an actor or a real artist? Is anyone in the audience an actor? Are you, unknowingly, an actor yourself? This is Stanford’s Asian American Theater Production’s Caught: an exploration of freedom and oppression, China and Western perceptions of China, and, first and foremost, the pursuit of truth—or lack thereof."

Durango   by Julia  Cho  |  Directed  by  Vineet  Gupta  '18

  • The Stanford Daily | "Each individual’s commitment to the show, in conjunction with time-appropriate lighting and environment-appropriate sounds, allows us to believe that we travel with them everywhere. We feel the vibrations of the car on the way to Durango, Colorado."
  • Stanford Arts Review | "Tian, Doan, and Zeng create a family that is funny, multi-faceted, unexpected, difficult, and real. This is what makes Durango stand out as a production. It may be filled with some heavy themes–death, racism, immigration, homosexuality, familial fragmentation. But it is not about these things; it is about the small moments, hard-hitting phrases, and expressions of emotion that break and build families."

YELLOW  FACE     by  David  Henry  Hwang  |   Directed  By  Vineet  Gupta  '18

  • Stanford Arts Review | "Yellow Face makes me uncomfortable. It makes me angry. But it’s supposed to. It’s supposed to make me want to scream in the faces of Swinton and Johansson and Emma Stone and Jake Gyllenhaal and Jim Sturgess and every other white actor who has ever taken a role meant for a person of color and ask them how they have the gall and the conscience to participate in this systemic and poisonous racism."

INTO  THE  WOODS      BY  SONDHEIM  AND  LAPINE   |   DIRECTED  BY  ARIANA  JOHNSON  '17

  • The Stanford Daily | An interview with director Ariana Johnson '17 on the process and intent behind this production of Into the Woods.
  • The Stanford Daily | "As a company, AATP aims to address the Asian American experience with theatre. In its production of Into The Woods, AATP make it clear... that they are 'wary to claim the production under a singular label of ‘Asian’' and instead aim to use 'Asian-inspired designs and a diverse cast [to] drive home the universality of the fairytales.'"
  • Stanford Arts Review | "It’s a gorgeous production. From the beautifully designed set, hued with deep reds, bright oranges, and cool greys, to the near-professional command of comedic timing, the cast and crew of Into the Woods infuses this tale of desire and decision with a creative freshness that can be lost when performing such an influential piece of theater."

STOP  KISS      BY  DIANA  SON   |   DIRECTED  BY  ASIA  CHIAO  '15

  • The Stanford Daily | "From the directing to the acting to the top-notch set and technical elements, “Stop Kiss” is one of the highlights of the Stanford Theater scene this year."
  • Stanford Arts Review | "On paper or its Wikipedia page, Stop Kiss seems to be a story defined by violence—but in performance, especially in this production by the Asian American Theater Project, it does not allow itself to be defined by hate. Stop Kiss is a powerful exploration into sexuality, latent homophobia, acceptance, and, most of all, love."

CHING  CHONG  CHINAMAN      BY  LAUREN  YEE   |   DIRECTED  BY  SAYA  JENKS  '16

  • The Stanford Daily  |  An article about gender inequality in the field of directing and the rise of female directors at Stanford featuring Ching Chong Chinaman's director, Saya Jenks '16.
  • Stanford Arts Review | A review of the production exploring the ways in which it negotiates whiteness and cultural identity.
  • STATIC | A piece in Stanford's activist journal on satire and identity politics in Ching Chong Chinaman. 

MY  FAIR  LADY     BY  LERNER  AND  LOEWE  |   DIRECTED  BY  KEN  SAVAGE  '14

  • Stanford Arts Review | An interview with Director Ken Savage '14 and Costume Designer Asia Chiao '15 about inspiration for the production and the hurdles they jumped to realize their visions.
  • Stanford Arts Review | "Director Ken Savage's production exploded from the stage... I was subsumed, following a social commentary I had never seen My Fair Lady as capable of providing... It stands as a form of scholarly activism – an invitation to start a dialogue on how we perceive characters when they belong to a given race, and why we do not perceive them in that way when they belong to another one."
  • STATIC | Stanford's activist publication compares AATP's production of My Fair Lady with the Stanford Savoyard's simultaneous production of The Mikado and explores what the definition of an "Asian musical" is and should be.
  • The Stanford Daily | "Perhaps most importantly, Savage and his creative team refuse to allow for a strict binary between Western identity and Eastern identity, high-class and low-class, rich and poor. Every character in this play seemed to exist on some sort of cultural identity spectrum... There was room for hybridity in racial identity."
  • Stanford News | The Stanford Report interviews AATP Artistic Director/Director of My Fair Lady, Ken Savage '14, AATP Executive Producer/Producer and Costume Designer of My Fair Lady, Asia Chiao '15, and actors Max Savage '16 (Henry Higgins) and Saya Jenks '16 (Eliza Doolittle) for an article that was featured on Stanford's homepage. (See video below)

Death  of  a  salesman      by   arthur  miller  -  may 2013

  • The Stanford Daily | Stanford's newspaper interviews Death of a Salesman's creative team about their goals for the production: "[I want to] make sure this play sparks dialogue between the production, actors, and the audience about what the American dream means, especially among minority groups." - Producer Ken Savage '14

trying  to  find  chinatown       by  david  henry  hwanG  -  january 2013

  • STATIC | Producer and AATP board member Leow Hui Min Annabeth '16 discusses how the frustrations she experienced in regards to race as a Singaporean living in America lead her to produce Trying to Find Chinatown by David Henry Hwang "Only a causeway a whisker longer than a kilometre separates my native Singapore from neighboring Malaysia, but the social meaning of race changes markedly on either side... Either Either I am not Chinese enough, or my skin is indelibly stamped with Chineseness..."

The  25th  annual  putnam  county  spelling  bee       by   rebecca  feldman  &  william  finn  -  november  2012

  • Stanford Arts | Director Ken Savage '14 and Asia Chiao '15 discuss how the themes that Spelling Bee explore with both the Asian community and the larger Stanford community: Spelling Bee "speaks to the universal experience of competition but also the Asian American overachiever complex."

PAWN     written, directed, and  composed  by  karmia  chan  cao  -  2011

  • Stanford News | "Since selling out several shows to rave reviews on the Stanford campus, Cao and the all-student cast and crew of Pawn have spent the summer on a whirlwind international tour, performing for over 10,000 audience members in South Korea, China and Canada. Along the way, Pawn won the award for best original musical at the Daegu International Musical Festival in South Korea and garnered a great deal of positive press."
  • Stanford Daily | "I just wanted to explore terror in general, and talk about it. Terror long existed before we defined it as this kind of terror, and that normal, everyday terror still exists for lots of people who live in avid fear, constant fear - and that needs to be taken care of." - Director & writer Karmia Cao
  • Stanford Daily | An review of an early draft of PAWN, then called Abraham Niu and the Friendly Fires: "I only saw a rough cut of the music, but I'm enchanted... It's an all-live ensemble of mostly folk, pop and rock, but includes throat singing from Mongolian tradition and, if you listen closely, undertones of Chinese influences twanging through Western sounds; even a Native American flute emerges."