NEW YORK CITY | Playwright Kyoung H. Park is working on a new play, entitled Tala, which will perform July 28th to 31st at HERE Arts Center (145 Sixth Avenue in downtown SoHo) in New York City. The play is a work-in-progress and is a critique on the nature of political revolutions.
Park has invited me to moderate an artist talkback after a 2PM matinee performance of Tala on July 29th. Join me, TALA's creative team and the members of the Pacific Beat Collective (PBC).
Our discussion will explore and investigate what it takes to create an interdisciplinary company such as PBC and how this company's mission intersects with political theater, artistic collaboration and the theme of ideological revolutions. Our conversation will be followed by a Q&A with the audience.
Want to learn more about Tala?
Park has shared with in the theater of One World the script to his play, scenic-design items, a computer rendering, an early sketch, and photos of an early developmental workshop at ToRoNaDa Theater:
"Currently in production | Play excerpt, models, design sketches for Pacific Beat Collective's "Tala" at HERE Arts Center, July 28 to 31"
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http://theaterofoneworld.org/2012/07/23/currently-in-production-play-excerpt-models-design-sketches-for-pacific-beat-collectives-tala-at-here-arts-center-july-28-to-31/
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| Kyoung H. Park's play "Tala" (ToRoNaDa Theater, April 2012) | Photo by Paul Mpagi Sepuya |
In the spring of 2011, Park founded Pacific Beat Collective with Amanda J. Crater and Keren Toledano. They began their work by organizing two panel discussions to serve Theater C's production of Park's play disOriented, which focused on political theater and North Korean politics.
I am very honored to cooperate with Kyoung Park in this work-in-progress production of TALA, particularly since I made a point to feature his riverting play disOriented in American Theatre magazine.
Pacific Beat Collective is a multi-cultural collective of artists creating interdisciplinary works of original theater that explore our world's interconnectedness. "We believe that theater has the power to bridge cultural differences and serve as a tool for non-violent social change," says Park. "Through art and dialogue, our work questions oppressive social structures and promotes a culture of peace, by radically de-stabilizing normative assumptions that cause direct and structural violence in the world." --RG
A MESSAGE FROM KYOUNG H. PARK
Greetings!Things have been hectic since I graduated from Columbia, as I'm preparing to launch my theater company Pacific Beat Collective (PBC) this fall. Pacific Beat Collective has been my dream since I started graduate school, and it's become more and more of a necessity as I stabilize my career, and my life, in New York.
In the spring of 2011, I founded Pacific Beat Collective with Amanda J. Crater and Keren Toledano, and we began our work by organizing two panel discussions to serve Theater C's production of my play "disOriented," which focused on political theater and North Korean politics, and an artist talkback to discuss the production of the play. Later that year, we launched PBC Underground--a quarterly, interdisciplinary arts salon for NY based artists--to nurture collaborative relationships as an alternative to specialized training and industrialized practice in the arts.
In the meanwhile, we began the development of TALA, PBC's first original show, which I devised in collaboration with our actors Rafael Benoit, Daniel K. Isaac, and Natalia Miranda-Guzman; composer Svetlana Maras (Serbia), choreographer Yin Yue (China), video designer John Knowles (USA), installation artist Jason Krugman (USA), theater designers Chris Barlow (Sound), Chuan-Chi Chan (Lighting), Elizabeth Groth (Costumes), Marie Yokoyama (Set) and Stage Manager Ashley Rossetti.
After a sold-out workshop of TALA at NYC's ToRoNaDa Theater this past April, I'm happy to announce that we're remounting the show for a second workshop at the HERE Arts Center on July 28th-31st, which will help us refine the work we've created, address the dramaturgical questions of our audiences, and better craft the production's design with technical support from HERE.
Poets Pablo Neruda and Gabriela Mistral are the source of inspiration for Pepe and Lupe. Gabriela Mistral, Latin America’s first Nobel Laureate, mentored Neruda as a young poet and they kept a life-long relationship through written correspondence. Throughout their careers, both Neruda and Mistral served as Chilean diplomats and they traveled worldwide to take part in local and international politics.
Gabriela Mistral, who is rumored to be a closeted lesbian, spent her last years in New York after spending much of her life in self-exile, working as an educator in Mexico. On the other hand, Neruda’s poetry and politics garnered him a nomination to Chile’s presidency through the Chilean communist party. Neruda offered his nomination to Salvador Allende, which lead to the first democratic election of a Marxist president.
Twelve days after Pinochet's military coup, and Allende's assassination, Pablo Neruda died. While there are conspiracy theories as to whether Neruda was murdered by Pinochet's regime, the popular story is that Neruda died of a broken heart.
During Pinochet’s regime, Mistral’s image was co-opted and made into a motherly heroine of the Chilean people; in fact, Mistral was put on the 5,000 peso note, even though Mistral received very little recognition in Chile while she was alive. Meanwhile, Neruda's houses in Santiago and Valparaiso were ransacked by the police and Pinochet smeared Neruda for his Communist beliefs. In TALA, which is titled after Mistral’s second book of poems, I’m giving these two Chilean poets another chance to be together, and adapted their poems and letters to capture the turbulent times they experienced.
I’m personally proud of the work we’re accomplishing with TALA, as it's provided me with the opportunity to re-construct a history that was censored during my childhood. Having witnessed the last eight years of Pinochet’s military dictatorship and Chile’s transition to democracy, I've deeply considered the way neo-liberal capitalism affected Chile's socialist movement in the 1970's. These are the same ideological conflicts that separated my family from their country (I'm a third generation North Korean), and I wonder what these historical lessons can provide to our understanding of post-9/11 politics in the United States.
I’ve written a manifesto called “An Aesthetic Meditation” to further describe my experiences and questions. While the manifesto is a mash-up of different cultural theories, it provides a critique on the limitations of theater and reinforces aesthetic ideals on how Art can better function in society. At the core of the Manifesto, and central to PBC and the creation of TALA, is the investigation of how artists can explore conflict through theater and creatively collaborate to connect theater and peace.
I hope you’ll come see TALA and support us at the HERE Arts Center on July 28th-31st. We’ll have evening performances at 7:00 PM, and an artist talkback after a 2PM matinee performance on July 29th, moderated by Randy Gener.
If you’re not able to come, but would like to help, please consider making a donation to our Indiegogo Campaign. We are a new company and our access to public funds and grants is limited, so we need the support of charitable individuals to continue our work. You can make tax-deductible donations here, or write a check payable to “Fractured Atlas” with “Pacific Beat Collective” in the memo line and send it to the address below.
Thank you for your support!
Peace,
Kyoung H. Park
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| Kyoung H. Park, playwright |
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