2024-2025 Season
Main Stage Productions @ Boston Center for the Arts
Radical joy, Asian American activism, and love letters to our inner children.
Our 2024–25 season was a year of radical joy and Asian American activism — a collection of love letters and songs for the inner children raised in a time of diaspora. Across three productions, we met tenderness with defiance and grief with laughter, on stage and in the streets.
Did You Eat? (밥 먹었니?)
A World Premiere Production
Nov. 12 - 30, 2024
Co-Produced with Seoulful Productions
Written and Performed by Zoë Kim*
Directed by Chris Yejin
Dramaturgy by Amrita Ramanan
Boston Center for the Arts, Plaza Black Box Theatre (539 Tremont St, Boston, MA)
Did You Eat? (밥 먹었니?) is Zoë Kim’s autobiographical journey through love’s many forms–how it’s learned, given, and reflected inward. In a nimble and tender solo performance, Zoë shapeshifts into the souls of her family into a whirlwind of memory, where tears and laughter collide.
It’s not just a story, but a reckoning–weaving through the soft threads of Korean/American identity, belonging, and healing. Did You Eat? (밥 먹었니?) is a poetic love letter to the inner child, and hopefully yours too.
Learning How to Read by Moonlight
A new play by Gaven D. Trinidad
May 16 - Jun 8, 2025
Directed by Natsu Onoda Power
A CHUANG Stage & Company One Theatre co-production
Boston Center for the Arts Plaza Theatre (May 16 – 25) | Pao Arts Center (May 29 – June 1) | The Umbrella Arts Center (June 5 – 8)
While his mother struggles to earn money in New York City and his father waits alone in Manila for their daily phone calls, six-year-old Eddie learns English from his imaginary friend. Between the War on Drugs in the Philippines and the anti-immigrant movement in the United States threatening their humanity, will this undocumented family be able to pursue their dreams and address unspoken truths? A musical and multilingual journey of childlike wonder, Gaven D. Trinidad’s Learning How to Read by Moonlight is equal parts playful, poignant, and hella Pinoy.
To spotlight Boston’s own community leaders and activism, a new narrator (a fellow artist, community organizer, or elected official) joins the storytelling every night.
New Play Development Program
At CHUANG Stage, we are committed to uplifting hyper-local voices and stories of Boston’s Asian American communities. We have partnered with Fresh Ink Theatre Company on the Development and Incubation Residency, as a part of Fresh Ink’s 2024 - 25 season.
The New Play Development and Incubation Residency are dedicated to empowering New England-based AAPI playwrights and uplifting stories that reflect the ever-expanding AAPI identity.
The New Play Development Residency is awarded to Ugly Feelings by Karina Cowperthwaite. The program includes a playwright award, including one-on-one meetings with dramaturgs from both Fresh Ink and CHUANG Stage, an internal workshop, and a public staged reading. This public reading performance will take place at Boston Center for the Arts from March 7 to 9, 2025.
The Inkubation Residency is awarded to Mary Magdalene, Daughter, Boatperson by Diana Khong. The program includes a playwright award and community research funding plus 12 months of personalized dramaturgical support from a professional dramaturg.
UGLY FEELINGS
Written by Karina Cowperthwaite
Directed by Sarah Shin
Dramaturgy by Annie Jin Wang
Saturday, March 8 at 7:30 pm
Sunday, March 9 at 2pm
Boston Center for the Arts, Black Box Theatre
Enter the abstract world of angst, confusion, and teenage fantasy as two multiracial Chinese American twins navigate growing up in a white-dominated New England suburb, where they’ve never quite felt like they belong.
