October 6, 2023

Mandell Presents welcomes artist Kristina Wong!

Kristina Wong is a Doris Duke Artist Award winner, Guggenheim Fellow and a Pulitzer Prize finalist in Drama. She’s a performance artist, comedian, actor and writer who has been presented internationally across North America, the UK, Hong Kong and Africa. She’s been a guest on late night shows on NBC, Comedy Central and FX. She starred in her own pilot presentation with Lionsgate for truTV. Her commentaries have appeared on American Public Media’s Marketplace, PBS, VICE, Jezebel, Playgirl Magazine, Huffington Post and CNN. She’s been awarded artist residencies from MacDowell, San Diego Airport and Ojai Playwrights Festival. She is currently the Artist-in-Residence at ASU Gammage and the Kennedy Center Social Practice Resident. Her work has been awarded with support from Creative Capital, The MAP Fund, Center for Cultural Innovation, National Performance Network, a COLA Master Artist Fellowship from the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, nine Los Angeles Artist-in-Residence awards, Center Theatre Group’s Sherwood Award, the Art Matters Foundation, and the Joan D. Firestone Commissioning Fund from En Garde Arts. Her recent “Kristina Wong for Public Office” was simultaneously a real life stint as a local elected official in Koreatown, Los Angeles and rally campaign show. That show was filmed for Center Theater Group’s Digital Stage. She's created and directed original theater works with residents of LA's Skid Row, the Bus Riders Union, undocumented immigrants, and most recently the formerly incarcerated Asian Pacific Islanders members of API Rise. Kristina founded Auntie Sewing Squad, a national mutual aid network of volunteers that sewed cloth masks for vulnerable communities during the Covid pandemic. Their book “The Auntie Sewing Squad Guide to Mask Making, Radical Care and Racial Justice is published by the University of California Press. Her role in the Auntie Sewing Squad is the subject of her currently touring “Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord”— a “New York Times Critics Pick” that premiered off-Broadway at New York Theater Workshop. The show won the Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and Lucille Lortel Awards for “Outstanding Solo Performance”. “Auntie Kristina’s Guide to Asian American Activism” comes out Spring 2025 from Beaming Books and is co-written with the producers of Radical Cram School.

Be sure to catch her on October 12 at 7pm in the Mandell Theater! Tickets are free but registration is required.