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Pork Filled History
The Pork Filled
Players burst onto the Seattle scene in 1998,
blending community activism with theatrical passion. Founded by Wally
Glenn, David Kobayashi, Roger Tang, and Ellen Williams (who later found
TV sitcom stardom on such shows as How
I Met Your Mother), the Players
focused their efforts toward a (then) rarely seen medium in Asian
American theater: Asian American comedy.The Players established a unique voice in the Seattle Asian American community, becoming artists in residence at the Northwest Asian American Theatre, and writing and producing late night sketch comedy shows. They also spread into the wider sketch comedy community,
as
peers of such fabled groups as Mike Daisey’s Up In You Grill, Bald
Faced Lie, and The Habit. They were charter performers at the first
Seattle SketchFest, the nation’s longest-running sketch comedy
festival, and hold the current record for the most return appearances
in the festival.During this time, they also toured throughout the Pacific Northwest, appearing in festivals such as Bumbershoot, the Seattle Fringe Festival, and Vancouver BC’s SketchOff@%#?, the first International Asian Canadian/American sketch comedy competition.
Seeking new horizons to
conquer, in 2007, the Players staged their
first full-length play and went on to produce several more, including
the Northwest premiere of Yellow Face,
a timely farce of mistaken
racial identity by Tony Award winner David Henry Hwang. Meanwhile, they
still maintained their presence as Seattle’s longest-running sketch
comedy group with regular full-length sketch comedy shows and hosting
Spam*O*Rama, a comedy & music
cabaret.In 2013, as their members honed a growing ability to conceive and write longer works, the Players spun off their theatre efforts as Pork Filled Productions, while still retaining their sketch comedy work under the Pork Filled Players name.
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