The doorway of the historic First Chinese Baptist Church will transform into a stage, with small, vignette performances throughout the afternoon. From 2-6 p.m., experience puppetry by Spica Wobbe, dance by Mei Yin Ng, song by Alvin Eng, as well as spoken word by Ava Chin, Richard Chang, and Ernest Abuba! 

These artists’ performances have been made possible by the New York City Artist Corps. #CityArtistCorps @NYCulture

FULL SCHEDULE 

2:00-2:15	Puppet: “Nian Monster”
2:30-2:45	Puppet: “Nian Monster”
2:50-3:00	Spoken word: “Wong Chin Foo”
3:05-3:15	Spoken word: “Chinatown Suffragette”
3:25-3:35	Dance: “Sit, Eat, and Chew” excerpts
3:40-3:50	Poetry: Ernest Abuba
3:55-4:05	Song: “Here Comes Johnny Yen Again” excerpts
4:10-4:20	Spoken word: “Wong Chin Foo”
4:25-4:35	Spoken word: “Chinatown Suffragette”
4:40-4:50	Dance: “Sit, Eat, and Chew” excerpts
4:55-5:05	Poetry: Ernest Abuba
5:10-5:20	Song: “Here Comes Johnny Yen Again” excerpts

Program & Artist Bios

“Nian Monster” is a puppet play about the oldest traditional festival in China, the Lunar New Year. Many existing customs and activities of the festival actually can be traced back to the story of the Nian Monster, which helps to explain why and how the festival is celebrated. Come and let Uncle John the puppet tell you all about it. 

John Wobbe is a retired studio engineer. He is a puppeteer  by marriage - to Spica Wobbe -and raconteur by accident. He spends his retirement reading about New York City history and making short films with puppets, but mostly - in the words of Kurt Vonnegut - just farting around. 

Spica Wobbe (Shu-yun Cheng) is a puppetry artist originally from Taiwan. Her work has been seen in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea, Japan, Holland, Germany, Israel,  and Austria.  Now based in NYC, she works as a puppetry designer, performer and educator. She established Double Image Theater Lab in 2011 to create cross-cultural productions that explore the world of the past and the present.   

Margaret Yuen is a dancer, instructor, choreographer and founder of the Red Silk Dancers. Her journey in puppetry theatre began in 2016 where she took the first workshop hosted by LaMaMa. Since then, Ms. Yuen has presented several original puppetry works under the guidance of Federico Restrepo and has collaborated and performed with Spica Wobbe in the past three years.

The excerpt from “Sit, Eat and Chew” to be performed is an experimental dance solo from a larger site-specific work for different Chinatown locations, adapted for 21 Pell St. It channels the story of Bow Kum, a Chinese immigrant from the 1880s. After being bought from China as a bride in San Francisco, being rescued by missionaries, then remarrying and relocating to New York City, she is tracked down by her first husband who demanded compensation. When her new husband refused, he attacked her. The fight over Bow Kum exacerbated Chinatown’s notorious Tong Wars — violent conflicts frequently documented in history books, but mostly without mention of her story.

Mei-Yin Ng (dancer/choreographer) https://www.meibewhatever.com/

Born in the backwater port town of Klang, Malaysia, Mei-Yin Ng was poised from birth to create art using the human body and technology. Her father, a car mechanic and local visionary, was the first Klang citizen to ever possess a film projector.  With the advent of video, he then became the first Klanger to own a camcorder. As the 70’s progressed in South-East Asia, Ng often snuck into the family room at ungodly hours to watch American musicals on TV. 

Since moving to NYC, Ng has studied primarily at the Merce Cunningham Studio, Trisha Brown Studio, and Movement Research. She has worked with the contemporary theatre group Remote Control Productions/ Michael Laub, touring in the 1996-97 production “Planet Lulu” in major festivals throughout Europe and Scandinavia. Dance Theatre Workshop presented her inaugural work “Graffito” (1997) at their Freshtracks series. Her full-evening performances were presented by the Joyce Soho (2000), Construction Company (2002, 2008), Tribeca Performance Arts Center (2007), PS122 (2001, 2004) and HERE (2014). Focusing initially on modern movement as inner being, Ng’s work continues to evolve with the possibilities of contemporary technologies. She founded MEI-BE WHATever in 2002 as a collective field for collaboration and experimentation of technology. 

“Wong Chin Foo” is a spoken word portrayal of the historic Chinatown figure who founded the Chinese American newspaper (Chatham St, now Park Row) in 1883 and the Chinese Theatre (5-7 Doyers St). He wielded his pen and pulpit in his fight against the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and urged members of the community to become citizens and vote.

Richard Chang is a playwright-performance artist who blends multiple genres based on solid research to tell neglected stories. His epic play, Citizen Wong, about late 19th-century social rights activist Wong Chin Foo, will have its world premiere at Pan Asian Repertory Theatre in April. https://www.citizenwong.com/

“Here Comes Johnny Yen Again (or How I Kicked Punk)” excerpts are “acoustic punk raconteur” works that explore the impact of opium and the Opium Wars on the Chinese Diaspora - as well as NYC’s punk/counterculture -  through the dual prisms of William S. Burroughs’ character, “Johnny Yen”––immortalized in Iggy & Bowie’s “Lust For Life”––and Eng’s own Grandfather’s opium overdose in NYC's Chinatown.

Alvin Eng is a native NYC playwright, performer and educator. His plays and performances have been seen Off-Broadway, as well as in Paris, Hong Kong and Guangzhou, China. Recent projects: Dixon Place Workshop Residency to develop a solo “acoustic punk raconteur” work Here Comes Johnny Yen Again (or How I Kicked Punk); National Sawdust commission for an essay and spoken word video, History, Not Nostalgia, Crossroads 2021: For James Baldwin. Honors include: Fulbright Specialist and LMCC grants; three NYSCA/NYFA Fellowships––most recently in 2020 for his memoir, Our Laundry, Our Town: Memoir Portraits from a NYC Chinese American Life-In-Progress, to be published by Fordham University Press in 2022.

“Chinatown Suffragette”
Dr. Mabel Ping-Hua Lee (b. 1896), was Chinatown's first suffragist, who spoke out as a teenager in favor of women's equality in her address, "The Meaning of Woman Suffrage". Mabel's address will be read in front of the First Chinese Baptist Church, whose congregation she led for over 40 years.

Ava Chin is the author of Eating Wildly,  the first prize winner of the 2015 M.F.K. Fisher Book Award, and the editor of Split: Stories from a Generation Raised on Divorce. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Village Voice, and Saveur, among others. She has been the recipient of grants and fellowships from the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center, the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program, the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), the New York Institute for the Humanities, and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. She is an associate professor of creative nonfiction at the City University of New York. 

“Poetry by Ernest Abuba”

Ernest will recite a short poem about his mother’s birth in Aiea Heights, Hawaii. “Hurt Men” is a poem about the early Manang Filipino immigrants to U.S. at the time of Carlos Bulosan, and Bienvenido Santos, author of Scent of Apples. “Ancient Blood, Ancient Tears” is an epic poem that is an affirmation in celebration of the multi-ethnic community:Chinese and Cambodian immigrants, Native Americans, Black (African) Americans, Native Americans, Latino and Jewish.

Ernest Abuba is a director, playwright, actor, poet, and teacher. He assisted Fay Chiang and Mary Lum as Director/Playwright & Teacher of the Theatre Program at Basement Workshop on Catherine St., in Chinatown, and at Henry Street Settlement. He has performed in five Broadway shows, and starred in several TV shows and films, most notably 12 Monkeys, directed by Terry Gilliam. Abuba is the recipient of an Obie, five NYSCA Grants, a Rockefeller Foundation Playwright Residency, and the NY Creative Artist Public Service Grant, as well as three NEA Match Grants for Playwriting. His plays, including The Dowager, An American Story, Papa-Boy, Eat A Bowl of Tea, Dojoji: The Man Inside The Bell, Nightstalker, and Cambodia Agonistes have been produced Off-Broadway and internationally. The recording of Cambodia Agonistes, for which he wrote the book and lyrics, is scheduled for release in late December.