All posts by Roger Tang

Audition for EXOTIC DEADLY!

The short line:

Pork Filled Productions and SIS Productions present Exotic Deadly: Or the MSG Play, by Keiko Green (The Bed Trick, Hometown Boy, Nadeshiko). Directed by Mimi Katano. 

Audition/Interview Dates:
Monday, March 24 @ 5:30pm – 9:30 pm
Tuesday, March 25 @ 5:30 pm – 9:30 pm

Callbacks or second audition/interview?
Thursday, April 3 @ 5:30-9:30
Saturday, April 5 @ 11-5 pm

Audition Requirements:
Please prepare a one minute contemporary comedic monologue. Please apply for an audition by Friday, March 21 5 pm

Use this audition form!

The longer form:

It’s 1999, and Ami just wants to blend in and be an American teenager. But two things shatter her universe: the arrival of a Japanese exchange student, Exotic Deadly (who doesn’t play by the rules) and the discovery that her grandfather invented MSG. These twin challenges send Ami careening through space and time, from post WWII Japan to the ocean bottom and leads to her ultimate destination: figuring out who she really is.

Pork Filled Productions is the theater offshoot of the long-running sketch comedy group, The Pork Filled Players. PFProductions grew from a desire to break stereotypes and challenge expectations of Asians in theater. SIS Productions shares new Asian American plays with humor and heart while creating visibility for and centering the talent and leadership of Asian American Women. For more information please visit us at porkfilled.com and facebook.com/porkfilledproductions and https://celebr8women.wordpress.com/ and https://www.facebook.com/sisproductions.

To schedule an audition, please fill out this audition form by Friday, March 21, 5 pm: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfz4M6VZeUHunAygRJsoD7DOLB6ikLPF65Vcm24nY38zQB_Mg/viewform?usp=sharing

AUDITION INFORMATION

Audition/Interview Dates:
Monday, March 24 @ 5:30pm – 9:30 pm
Tuesday, March 25 @ 5:30 pm – 9:30 pm

Callbacks or second audition/interview?
Thursday, April 3 @ 5:30-9:30
Saturday, April 5 @ 11-5 pm

Audition Requirements:
Please prepare a one minute contemporary comedic monologue. Please apply for an audition by Friday, March 21 5 pm

Rehearsals begin early to mid July
Load in August 25, 2025
Tech: Beginning August 30, 2025
Invited dress: TBA
Opening: September 6, 2025
Closing: September 20, 2025

Actors will be paid a stipend of $600.

Character Breakdown / Project Needs:

All characters are Asian.
Actors of Asian descent are strongly encouraged to audition.

ACTOR 1 – Female. 20’s
plays… AMI, an awkward, 14 year-old over-sharer, who just wants to stay invisible. Lots of energy. This is her story until the story takes over. Until then, she’s a manic Zach Morris on the brink of a dark identity crisis. She doesn’t really identify with the Asian culture that is literally pumping through her veins. Loves her family, hates her family.

ACTOR 2 – Female. 20’s – 30’s.
plays… EXOTIC DEADLY, a timeless (yet youthful) rebel. Unpredictable. The embodiment of MSG. Like a chestnut, she’s prickly yet surprisingly sweet. But years of being misunderstood takes its toll. Maybe it’s time to throw in the towel and conform to what the world wants her to be.

ACTOR 3 – Male. 20’s – 30’s. He represents family: our ancestors, our brothers. The flawed, surprisingly sensitive sweetheart. His eyes are warm, even as he teases you. The first to laugh at the joke at his own expense, even when the other guy goes too far. He’ll be a great Dad one day.

ACTOR 4 – Female. 30’s – 40’s. A bit of a chameleon with comedy chops, who plays a lot of maternal figures: The Mom who shows her love through her actions, not her words. The annoyed Aunties who work on their feet day in and day out for a brighter future (for someone else). The Midwestern teacher who really just wants you to do your golly-darned best!

ACTOR 5 – Male or non-binary with comedy chops. 20’s – 30’s. The lovable buffoon. The well-intentioned, popular kid at school, who accidentally did a number on your self-esteem. We’re meeting him at his peak, and his peak looks great, especially in slo-mo. Think Bill & Ted.

ACTOR 6 – Male or non-binary. 20’s – 40’s. Can smoothly move between buffoonery and some Iago-level Shakespearean monologue, all with an egg roll in his mouth. The other popular kid at school, but also represents the dangers of the world. The funny, charming folks with maybe not so great intentions…

Submit using the audition form at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfz4M6VZeUHunAygRJsoD7DOLB6ikLPF65Vcm24nY38zQB_Mg/viewform?usp=sharing 

We offer the option to submit video auditions; email link to your audition video (along with headshot and resume) using audition form.

Audition Location:

562 1st Avenue S., 4th Fl
Seattle WA

Specific submission instructions: 

Submit a headshot and a resume (Please name your files RESUME_lastname_firstname.pdf and HEADSHOT_lastname_firstname.jpg)

You have the option to submit a video audition. Use the audition form listed above to submit the link to your audition along with your headshot and resume.

Other details you need to know about these auditions: 

Please apply for an audition by Friday, March 21 5 pm

The entrance is to a secured building; please be on time, as you will need to be let in.



Meet the Five UNLEASHED Winners!

Heads up for the five winners of Unleashed! And be ready to bask in their awesomeness  when we present the revised versions in public readings this June!

Hail Mary/Maria by RJ Silva
Kid, short for Kindness, gets slapped with his first real crush. He relies on his three Marys for guidance: his Filipina mother Marie, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and his favorite pro wrestler Maria. And although he feels like he’s blindly top-rope diving into love, will he be able to stand as a champion for himself? A coming-of-age story with the electricity of a live wrestling show, the comfort of your Filipino family, and the warmth of a budding romance, HAIL MARY/MARIA is a heartfelt adventure of finding and loving who you are.

RJ Silva (he/him/his) is a playwright based in Chicago, born and raised in Manila, the Philippines. His play, Hail Mary/Maria, has been in workshops and staged readings in Chicago and San Francisco, and continues to develop queer-centric stories told through magical realism and Filipino mysticism in his plays. Silva is the Artistic Director of CIRCA Pintig, Chicago’s Filipino theatre and community arts organization, having recently launched the Chicago Filipino American Theatre Festival. Silva is the co-creator of The Ampliverse, a multimedia channel that celebrates pop culture without the toxicity of exclusivity, creating podcasts and video content, and is in pre-production for their first queer web series, “Eat Cute.” RJ-Silva.com instagram.com/rj.slay theampliverse.com

C[Y]PHER

Fourth-grade math teacher ZARA CHADHA discovers that her father, a recently deceased AI pioneer, may have uploaded a digital copy of his mind onto a vast network. Clues point to Zara’s memories serving as the decryption key—the “cypher”— that will permit entry into where her father resides in his digital afterlife. How are her mother’s suicide, her father’s obsession with fixing the past, and Zara’s sense of abandonment linked?

HAROLD TAW is a playwright and multi-form writer. His debut novel was Adventures of the Karaoke King (Lake Union Publishing 2011). His writing has featured on NPR, in a New York Times bestselling anthology, and in The Seattle Times; his screenplay Dog Park was a 2023 LA LGBTQ+ Film Festival winner. With The 5th Ave Theatre’s Writers Group, Harold wrote the book for two musicals: PERSUASION (2015), based on Jane Austen’s final novel; and original one-act THE MISSED CONNECTIONS CLUB (2014). PERSUASION had its world premiere at Taproot Theatre Company in 2017 and its California premiere at Lamb’s Players Theatre in 2018. He wrote the book and lyrics for IN A BETTER WORLD: A MULTIVERSE MUSICAL, which had a 2022 staged reading funded by 4Culture, and the original play C[Y]PHER, which had a 2024 staged reading funded by City of Seattle and produced by Infinity Box Theatre Project.

BLOOD/SUCKER
Ryan, a high school social studies teacher, is tired. He’s been spending late nights grading homework, as well as fending off parental complaints about his Asian-American History class, who claim that he is using ‘Critical Race Theory’ to indoctrinate the students. Then Hillary, the new Principal, arrives. And the students are beginning to act very strange…  

Anamaria Guerzon (She/They) is a Filipino-American Theatre Artist in Seattle. Their work seeks to explore humanness, with an emphasis on marginalization and the legacy of ongoing colonization. They believe in the power of specificity. They also believe in the inherent magic of the human experience, and seek to represent this lived reality through the fantastic and strange. They blur the lines between this magic and the mundane, with the understanding that both exist, and life is full of inherent contradictions.

Their play SKIN has been developed in a workshop/reading with The Playwright Realm’s Scratchpad Series (dir. May Adrales), and was also in Seattle Public Theater’s Distillery program in 2024 (dir. Zenaida Smith). They have also developed work with Village Theater’s Northwest Creator’s Program (2022 Cohort), and Copious Love’s Plays On Tap series (2024). They received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Theatre, from Pacific Lutheran University (2021).

Eggshell; or Vỏ Trứng by Anthony Doan
Everything’s coming up roses at the Ly family’s Christmas Eve dinner. That is until Rose arrives, hoping to make a good impression, as she’s meeting her fiancé’s family for the first time. Despite her best efforts, the mood turns frigidly vicious when secrets are brought to light, forcing everyone to confront the fragility of their individual nature. “Eggshell; or Vỏ Trứng” tiptoes between farce, dark comedy, tragedy, and thriller as it follows a hauntingly dysfunctional family and unearths the fangs of internalized whiteness, self-acceptance, and the lengths we go to in order to survive.
Anthony Doan (he/they) is queer, first-generation Vietnamese-American theatre artist currently residing in the San Francisco Bay Area. Through an anti-racist, culturally-informed lens, they strive to viscerally entertain and challenge audiences, provoke political thoughts, and inspire people to empathetically listen to the world in a different vibration. He coins his aesthetic as “epic intimacy:” a sense of grandeur in dramatically heightened stakes that emerges from the obscure delights and emotional truths of human nature. Notable projects include developmental residencies with Crowded Fire Theater and More Más Marami Arts, a commission by Contemporary Asian Theatre Scene, and recognition as a semi-finalist in the 44th Bay Area Playwrights Festival. IG: @theanthonydoan

Play: “The Machine”
When Claudia, a 13-year-old, first-generation Korean-American is selected for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be one of three medical volunteers for a fantastical new piece of technology that has the ability to change any physical aspect of any person, she gives herself red hair in the hope that Penelope, the girl she has a crush on, will like her. However, she finds herself obsessed with this newfound access she has to change and the chance to live in the skin of those she is not. Ultimately, she has to decide: What does it take to live as your own authentic self?

Magpie Park (they/them) is a burgeoning playwright, creative, and neurotic artist. Based in New York, they have an interest in the intersection between the fantastical and the disturbing. Their plays feature a grotesque take on magical realism, frequently through the lens of race, sexuality, and gender. Most recently their work has been featured at the Tank and Theatre Write Now in NYC.

Save the Date for Instant Noodles! (March 8 and 9!)

Save the Date for—Instant Noodles, March 8 and 9 at TOJ!

Over 50 Asian American writers, actors, directors, musicians, and designers will come together to make a magical night of theater! Everyone will meet Friday night to figure out which actors, writers, and directors will be randomly paired together. Playwrights will write throughout the night and in the morning, actors and directors will rehearse throughout the day. Musicians will create music. Designers will create sets, props, lights, and costumes. Then the plays will be performed twice! Once on Saturday night and once on Sunday afternoon. Then it’s over! 

If you enjoyed our 24 hour festival Resilience! during the pandemic (winner of a Teeny Award for Racial Justice from Teen Tix), you’ll be delighted by this new showcase where local Asian American theatre artists get to show off!

Tickets are $10/$25/$50. Get them at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/pork-filled/instant-noodles-24-hour-play-festival!

Lunar New Year Potluck with PFP on January 1

Potluck! January 31! UHeights Center!

The Year of the Snake is nearly upon us and in the spirit of renewal, Pork Filled Productions is excited to bring back our Lunar New Year Celebration! We will be hosting a potluck gathering at the UHeights Auditorium (5031 University Wy NE, Seattle, WA 98105) from 7:30pm – 10:00pm on January 31st. This event is FREE and open to all!
We invite you to bring your friends and some food to share, and spend an evening connecting with other members of our amazing community. Meet new friends and collaborators, reconnect with old friends, and talk about the fantastical worlds we want to create together as we look into the future.
The ties we have to each other as a community are at the core of all storytelling and have been for as long as the storytelling tradition has existed. PFP is honored to be part of the Seattle AAPI theatre community, and thrilled to host a celebration of our community.