Tickets are now available for Unleashed 2020: New Pulp Stories for the 21st Century. PFP’s staged reading festival features new scripts by playwrights of color, exploring the genres of horror, science fiction, fantasy and mythology.

All tickets are available at https://pork-filled.ticketleap.com. All shows begin at 7 pm and will be streamed to a YouTube address provided to ticket buyers.

Pork Filled Productions is using a Name-Your-Price structure to work with our audience and what they can afford to give. Thank you for supporting local theatre and local theatre artists.

The lineup begins Tuesday, November 10, with I Thought I Was Safe, by Patrick Zhang, directed by Anna Ly, with dramaturgy by Daniel Rector. An amalgamation of the noir and horror genres, I Thought I Was Safe explores multigenerational immigrant trauma as it converges with decaying urban America.  Tickets for this show are available at https://pork-filled.ticketleap.com/i-thought-i-was-safe/.

Next, on Wednesday, November 11, will be a night of shorts. The Golden Disc, by Greg Lam, directed by Gecia Leal Pardo, dramaturgy by Lydia K. Valentine, is about two friends who have their day interrupted by the sudden arrival of an alien object. For the Living by Chie-Hoon Lee, directed by Zenaida Rose Smith, dramaturgy by Lydia K. Valentine, introduces us to a world of scientific reincarnation, and asks profound questions of where one life ends, and another begins. Perennial PFP favorite Maggie Lee rounds out the night with a new version of her short The Sight. They always knew they must lose their sight to become true Oracles of the Goddess. But now that the day of Initiation has arrived, two young novice seers struggle with their choice to live in darkness in order to see the light within.. Tickets for these shows are at https://pork-filled.ticketleap.com/a-night-of-shorts/.

On Thursday, November 12, PFP presents 100 Hungry Ghosts, by Jesse Jou, directed by Nabra Nelson, dramaturgy by Gavin Reub. Graham lives on the most haunted road in America. After multiple tragedies upend his life, he begins to see spirits, as his neighbors’ own painful histories surface. Will he learn to let go of grief or will he meet a grisly end at the hands of one hundred hungry ghosts? Tickets are at  https://pork-filled.ticketleap.com/100-hungry-ghosts/

Friday, November 13 sees miku and the gods, by Julia Izumi, directed by Kiefer Harrington, dramaturgy by Stephanie Kim-Bryan. Miku wants to be a god. Ephraim wants to be an Olympian. Grandma wants to remember. And Shara wants people to just include him in the conversation, you know? miku, and the gods is an epic and small adventure that braids friendship, death, and power beyond what one could ever desire. Tickets are at https://pork-filled.ticketleap.com/miku-and-the-gods/   

Finally, the festival caps off with a co-production with The Hansberry Project: Mustard Seeds, by Michelle Tyrene Johnson, directed by Valerie Curtis-Newton, with dramaturgy by Martine Kei Green-Rogers. On the banks of the Missouri River, a group of researchers gather at a former site of the Underground Railroad where slaves fought for their lives and swam for freedom. Under a full moon, old friends and colleagues are at each other’s throats as they struggle to reconcile their past. Nearby, spirits watch, as spirits do, trying to make sense of these mortals and find a way out.  Tickets at https://pork-filled.ticketleap.com/mustard-seeds/.

Festival passes for all shows are available at https://pork-filled.ticketleap.com/unleashed-2020/

Graphic design by Kayli Putaportiwon

Mother of Doom! The Tumbleweed Zephyr is back and it’s roaring down the tracks!

Join us for this special presentation of the second New Providence steampunk play, September 4, Friday, 7 pm PDT! It’s going to be a Live Video presentation on the PFP Facebook page and the Northwest Arts Streaming Hub Facebook page and YouTube channel! Join us and author Maggie Lee and Director Amy Poisson for this special event!

Two brothers, Atticus and Kai, climb aboard the Tumbleweed Zephyr, a transcontinental train headed from New Providence for the wilds of the Western Territories. But what starts as a simple journey by rail soon veers off-track, with airship bandits, twists of fate, wayward sparks of romance and the lonely call of a train whistle echoing across the clear desert sky.

Great Galloping Thunderturtles! It’s coming back! They’re all coming back!

 In conjunction with the Northwest Arts Streaming Hub and the Theatre Off Jackson, PFP is pleased to present a special live-streaming  of our famed New Providence steampunk trilogy!

It starts with an encore presentation of The Clockwork Professor, Friday, August 21, at 7 pm, hosted by PFP and the Theatre Off Jackson. And the rest of the trilogy (The Tumbleweed Zephyr and A Hand of Talons) will be hot on its heels on September 4 and 18!

This initial presentation features an intro from the PFP and TOJ crew and a few words from playwright Maggie Lee and director Amy Poisson. This will be simulcast free of charge on the PFP and NASH’s Facebook pages (though donations are always welcome!)

So doff your goggles, unwind your gear stems and break out your favorite confectionary as we revisit New Providence and Professor Pemberton for the first time since 2013!

PFP rolls on with our blockbuster series with a reading of Night Parade: The Ghost Forest, a co-production with Nordo:

When Justin, a white Youtuber, and Mari, his hapa assistant and girlfriend, go to Japan, they are spirited away by the Night Parade of a Hundred Demons. Now yokai want to devour them for their wrongdoings and they must tell the story of what happened when they visited the Aokigahara forest or the “Suicide Forest.” But both have secrets that get revealed; Mari has to wrestle with what Justin did and what her role is in defending him or letting him go.

By Kendall Uyeji
Directed by Tom Dang

CAST
Carol Tagawa – Mari
Lee Yang – Kamishibaiya / Salaryman
Rachel Guyer Mafune – Kiko the Kitsune
Eloisa Cardona – Yuwaku the Spider Woman
Matt Dela Cruz – Nurarihyon / Ensemble
Duncan Pound – Justin Matters

Night Parade: The Ghost Forest was originally commissioned by Nordo for their 2019/20 season which was delayed for Covid-19. Pork Filled is presenting a reading of this piece with Nordo as part of its continued development. Tickets are available at Click4Tix  (buyers will get a link for an unlisted YouTube channel). Go get yours today!

Summer is the time for big action and big adventure — and Pork Filled Productions is bringing some of our favorite big stories to your small screens with our Summer Blockbuster Readings! (Popcorn optional, but highly encouraged.) We’re excited to venture into the world of livestreamed theatre with all-new readings on Zoom, and old favorites on NASH!

JULY 18: Live reading of SHE-DEVIL OF THE CHINA SEA

Written by Roger Tang

Directed by Kiefer Harrington

Shih knows one thing in life: survival. She clawed her way up from refugee to prostitute to support her injured sister. But when China’s pirate lord offers her a chance at something more, the sorceress Wu and her dark forces gather to destroy her before she can even accept…and fulfill a destiny from the gods! An action fantasy a la BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA and MULAN, complete with pirate queens, swords and sorcery!

Get access through Eventbrite; name your ticket price starting at $5!

On-line program here!

Update:

Here’s the Youtube video of the reading:

Like it? Chip in money via  PayPal 
Or use our Click and Pledge page

PFP has joined the Northwest Arts Streaming Hub! We’re streaming our work so you can see for yourself what Pork Filled is all about!

Right now, we have stuff from our early years as a sketch comedy group, but we hope to add more recent stuff as time goes on.

If you’ve never seen us before, check us out (and drop a few coins in the bucket if you like us!)

https://nwartstream.org/pork-filled-productions

From Voyager’s golden discs to ghostly encounters of the unsettling kind, the slate for Pork Filled Productions’ Unleashed 2020 (New Pulp Stories for the 21st Century) showcases genre stories and POC voices seldom seen on stage.

“This is just our third year of Unleashed” says Executive Director Roger Tang, ,”and we’ve already had five of our scripts receive offers of productions from five different theatres. That’s a testament to the quality of work we get.

“Every year we’ve received more plays to read and meet more new playwrights from across the main. This year we got more than a hundred submissions, with the same quality of work. The market for genre work by POC artists simply thrives.” 

 The seven pieces include

•   I Thought I Was Safe by Patrick Zhang 
  An amalgamation of the noir and horror genres, I Thought I Was Safe explores multigenerational immigrant trauma as it converges with decaying urban America. 
•  For the Living, by Chie-Hoon Lee
  “If the clone had to be incarnated it would remember everything I do, as of today. But it still wouldn’t be me, would it? I’d still be dead, wouldn’t I?”
•  The Golden Record, by Greg Lam
  Two friends have their day interrupted by the sudden arrival of an alien object.
•  CJ: An ASpanglish Play, by Mercy Floresislas
  Carolina Juarez, CJ, is a fifteen year old forced to live with her estranged aunt and Deaf grandmother when her mom overdoses again. She has been disconnected from her Latino heritage and is not interested in getting to know her family including her grandmother who is Deaf and has dementia. During a teenage tantrum, she destroys her grandmother’s childhood toy and the family’s comadre conjures up a recipe to intervene as her personal Nahual. Two Aztec deities appear to her to give her a chance to change her life before is too late.
•  Mustard Seeds, by Michelle Tyrene Johnson
  On the banks of the Missouri River, a group of researchers gather at a former site of the Underground Railroad where slaves fought for their lives and swam for freedom. Under a full moon, old friends and colleagues are at each other’s throats as they struggle to reconcile their past. Nearby…spirits watch, as spirits do…trying to make sense of these mortals and find a way out.
•  100 Hungry Ghosts, by Jesse Jou
  Graham lives on the most haunted road in America. After multiple tragedies upend his life, he begins to see spirits, as his neighbors’ own painful histories surface. Will he learn to let go of grief or will he meet a grisly end at the hands of one hundred hungry ghosts?
•  miku and the gods, by Julia Izumi
  Miku wants to be a god. Ephraim wants to be an Olympian. Grandma wants to remember. And Shara wants people to just include him in the conversation, you know? miku, and the gods is an epic and small adventure that braids friendship, death, and power beyond what one could ever desire.

The next step is to match each script with a dramaturg, who will aid the playwright in re-writes and development over the summer. This culminates in a staged reading of the work, produced by PFP, set for late fall, this year.

“We’re following in the footsteps of our brethren at Theater Mu and Ma-Yi,” says Tang, “as we support the playwright at every step of the way, with dramaturgs and workshop readings to make the script the best it can possibly be.”

Directors and casting for the entire festival will be announced later.

The oldest Asian American theatre group in the Pacific Northwest, Pork Filled Productions centers Asian American and POC artists to imagine fantastical, inclusive and FUN universes. Through the genres of science fiction, noir, fantasy, steampunk, horror,  and more, we envision a bright universe informed by diverse experiences and perspectives, populated by larger than life characters, where everyone’s story can be told. PFP’s season is supported by 4Culture and the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture.

Pork Filled Productions is fiscally sponsored by Shunpike, the 501(c)(3) non-profit agency that provides independent arts groups in Washington with the services, resources and opportunities they need to forge their own paths to sustainable success.  

Playwright Bios:

Mercedes Floresislas is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker who writes trilingual plays to create opportunities for Deaf and Hard of Hearing actors to spread awareness of Deaf related issues and American Sign Language. Her first play, Tamales de Puerco revolutionized American Theater by introducing the first Latino Deaf characters. Floresislas first MFA play, Los Moreno, is the recipient of the 2016 Kennedy Center American Theater Festival Latinidad Award, the first alternate for the National Partners American Theater Award 2016, it was selected as the 50 Playwrights Project Best Unproduced Latinx plays 2017, Austin Latino Play Festival at Teatro Vivo, Milargo Theater Latinx Festival, and it was a runner up for Met Life’s 2017 Nuestras Voces. Floresislas is a recipient of the Gerbode Special Awards in the Arts. 

Julia Izumi’s work has been developed at MTC, The Bushwick Starr, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, WP Theater, Great Plains Theatre Conference, Berkeley Rep’s Ground Floor Residency and NNPN/Kennedy Center’s MFA Playwrights’ Workshop. She is a current member of Clubbed Thumb’s Early-Career Writers’ group and New Georges’ Audrey Residency. MFA: Brown University.

Michelle Tyrene Johnson is a public radio journalist, a writer and a former attorney. As a playwright, Johnson’s plays have been staged nationally, including in California, Texas, Illinois, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Kentucky. Several of her plays, such as Wiccans in the Hood, The Negro Whisperer, Trading Races: From Rodney King to Paula Deen, Echoes of Octavia, and Buried Roots have been in New York City festivals and readings.

Primarily a director of new and contemporary plays, Jesse Jou is currently on faculty at Texas Tech University. He is an alumnus of the Cherry Lane Mentor Project, the Drama League’s Directors Project, and the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab. Jesse is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama. 

Greg Lam is a playwright and podcaster who’s just moved to the Bay Area. His full-length play REPOSSESSED received its world premiere at Theatre Conspiracy in Fort Myers, FL in 2018. His newest play LAST SHIP TO PROXIMA CENTAURI received readings in 2019. For more about Greg, see https://greglam.wixsite.com/home.

Chie-Hoon Lee‘s credits include the short plays “For the Living” and “Half Life”. Chie-Hoon has worked in non-creative capacities for the renowned Belvoir and Griffin theatre companies in Sydney.

Patrick Zhang is a Philadelphia-born, but LA-based actor, writer, filmmaker, and student. He is inspired by the intersection of social justice and art. Patrick ultimately desires to democratize creativity through his work.