Atlantic Theater Company Announces Casts for Asian-American MixFest

This new free reading festival will highlight work by Lloyd Suh, Qui Nguyen, and many other Asian-American playwrights.

May Andrales will be participating in Asian American MixFest, directing a presentation of A. Rey Pamatmat's A Power Play; or, What's-Its-Name.
May Andrales will be participating in Asian-American MixFest, directing a reading of A. Rey Pamatmat's A Power Play; or, What's-Its-Name.
(© Allison Stock)

Atlantic Theater Company announced the casts for Asian-American MixFest, a new festival presenting a free series of readings of plays by Asian-American playwrights. All of the readings will take place at Atlantic Stage 2 from August 9-17.

For Madhuri Shekar's House of Joy, the cast will feature Melis Aker, Karen Huie, Mahira Kakkar, Layla Khosh, Hubert Point-du-Jour, Debargo Sanyal, Ayana Workman, and Rasha Zamamiri. "Set some time like the 17th century, in some place like Delhi, India," the play "tells the story of Hamida, an elite female bodyguard in the emperor's Imperial Harem. Faced with an impossible ethical quandary, Hamida tries to help an abused queen escape the heavily guarded harem, thus risking her life and going against everything she was raised to believe." Directed by Saheem Ali, Shekar's play will be presented on August 10.

On August 11, a quartet of one-act plays — Jessica Huang's Of Milk and Mirrors, Rajiv Joseph's Indira & Condoleezza, Jiehae Park's For Steve Wozniak, on His 67th Birthday, and Leah Nanako Winkler's Legs — will be presented in a single program directed by Seonjae Kim and David Mendizábal. The cast for all these short plays will include Eboni Booth, Dave Thomas Brown, Allison Buck, Harriett D. Foy, Emma Kikue Munson, Alison Rogers, Jenny Seastone Stern, Ricardo Vasquez, and Tiffany Villarin.

Carla Ching's Nomad Motel will feature a cast including Molly Griggs, Alex Hernandez, Christopher Larkin, Ken Leung, and Heidi Schreck. It is described as follows: "Alix lives in a tiny motel room with her mother and two brothers, scrambling to make weekly rent. Mason lives comfortably in a grand, empty house while his father runs jobs for the Hong Kong Triad. Until the day his father disappears and Mason has to figure out how to come up with grocery money and dodge Child Services and U.S. Immigration. Mason and Alex develop an unlikely friendship, struggling to survive and trying to outrun their parents’ mistakes. Will they make it out or fall through the cracks?" Directed by Ed Sylvanus Iskandar, the play will be presented on August 14.

Lloyd Suh, one of the producers of Asian-American Mixfest, will share his play Franklinland in a presentation on August 15 directed by Ralph B. Peña. The cast will include Brad Bellamy, Sasha Diamond, William Jackson Harper, and Daniel K. Isaac. The play is described as "the story of growing up as the only son of Benjamin Franklin: the greatest scientific mind in the world, inventor of the lightning rod and the urinary catheter and the glass harmonica and bifocal glasses and in his spare time, the United States of America."

Another producer of the festival, Qui Nguyen, will present a new work, War is F**king Awesome, on August 16. Directed by Robert Ross Parker, the cast will include Sheldon Best, William Jackson Harper, Jon Hoche, Margaret Odette, Nicky Schmidlein, Paco Tolson, Temar Underwood, and Emily Williams. It is described as "a politically incorrect action-comedy following the adventures of Unity Spencer, a young colonial girl who has been imbued with immortality."

Finally, A. Rey Pamatmat's A Power Play; or, What's-Its-Name will feature a cast including Ethan Dubin, Will Hochman, Teresa Lim, Sarah Nealis, Maulik Pancholy, Mirirai Sithole, Luis Vega, and Rocky Vega. It is described as follows: "After State Assemblywoman Alex Hathaway’s district suffers a terrible tragedy, she goes to great lengths to capture a House seat in the next election. She even employs a strange, nameless thing to gain victory over her enemies through supernatural practices. But with all that determination and those ancient powers on her side, how did Alex end up with a community in shambles and a gun pointed at her head?" Directed by May Andrales, Pamatmat's play will be presented on August 17.

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