All posts by Roger Tang

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!)

January 23, 2025 Roger Tang

**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/$15/$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

January 22, 2025 Roger Tang

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.

PFP Unveils 2025 Season

December 4, 2024 Roger Tang

The oldest Asian American in the Pacific Northwest, Pork Filled Productions announces a season full of premieres, new works and surprises for its 2025 season.

“Coming off our Gregory Award for our co-production of Vietgone with SIS Productions, we wanted to continue with strong, bold strokes,” says Executive Director Roger Tang. “We’re maintaining our partnerships and extending them in new and exciting ways.”

First up is Instant Noodles! A 24 Hour Play Festival, March 8 and 9 at the Theatre Off Jackson. A co-production with SIS Productions, Instant Noodles! builds upon 2021’s Resilience festival as it draws upon actors, writers, directors and designers drawn from all five Seattle Asian American theatres (PFP, SIS, Repertory Actors Theatre, Pratidhwani and Yun Theatre) to create seven brand new plays in 24 hours to showcase Asian American artists and themes.

Next is The Return of Joy Market, a co-production with Jet City Improv, at West of Lenin, May 1-24, 2025. Harkening back to PFP’s roots in Seattle’s first wave of sketch comedians,Joy Market showcases an all-AAPI cast will dive into the lives of vendors and use a combination of sketch and improv to create portals centered around AAPI voices and stories.

June trumpets the return of Unleashed, PFP’s new play development series that germinates new pulp stories for the 21^st Century. Four new scripts from across the country, drawn from horror, SF, fantasy, steampunk and other genres will debut on the Theatre Off Jackson stage June 18 to 21. Eight previous scripts from Unleashed went on to full productions at PFP and other stages in the US–see which of this quartet will make it to the stage.

September sees PFP’s Mainstage Production, teaming up again with SIS Productions to present the Pacific Northwest premiere of Exotic Deadly: Or the MSG Play by longtime Seattle favorite Keiko Green, September 6-20. It’s 1999, and Ami is an awkward, Japanese American high school girl, just trying to stay as invisible as possible. But her world comes crashing down with a terrible discovery: her family is responsible for manufacturing MSG, the poison spice getting all the kids hooked. Meanwhile, a mysterious new girl arrives from Japan. Her name? Exotic Deadly. She’s loud, she smokes, and she’s not playing by the rules. Who… or what is she? In this time traveling adventure, Ami vows to save the world from MSG and realizes what she’s capable of, if she would just stop being invisible.

That’s not all! There’ll be additional staged readings from PFP throughout the year, bringing the best in Asian American theatre to the Puget Sound area (because Seattle theatres are so slow in doing Asian American shows though 20% of the population is Asian American!).

For more information, check out the PFP website: www.porkfilled.com/wp or email PFP at porkfilled@gmail.com.

The oldest Asian American theatre group in the Pacific Northwest, Pork Filled Productions centers Asian American artists to imagine fantastical, inclusive and FUN universes. Through genres of science fiction, noir, fantasy, steampunk and more, we envision bright universes informed by diverse experiences and perspectives, with larger-than-life characters, where everyone’s story can be told. PFP is supported by 4Culture, ArtsFund, ArtsWA, the National Endowment for the Arts 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.

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Submissions Open for UNLEASHED 2025

September 12, 2024 Roger Tang

Unleashed 2025
New Plays for a New World

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS!

Unleashed 2025 returns for a week-long festival of brand new genre plays by Asian Americans! Pork Filled Productions is sounding the call, once again, for one acts and full length plays that indulge in genre, upend expectations, and expand imaginations. Deadline for submission is October 25^th 2024.

From Roger Tang, executive director of PFP: “We have more stories in us than oppression or identity plays. We want to give writers free rein to let loose their full storytelling potential on stage. And we want the audience to have fun and we get to tell our stories.”

If you are accepted, you will be given actors, a director, and a dramaturge. Private workshops, writing time, and a public workshop at Theatre Off Jackson in Seattle, W.A.

Please Submit your Application Here.

Key info

Deadline for submissions – October 25^th 2024.
Send plays to – submissions@porkfilled.com
All submitting playwrights must complete the accompanying application form
We have a CAP of 50 eligible plays. We will close submissions early if we reach this mark.
We are only accepting 4 Play at this time for workshop readings.

Questions? – info@porkfilled.com

Plays are not required to have specifically diverse casts or racial themes; however, Pork Filled Productions is dedicated to casting all of our shows with at least 51% actors of color, so please keep that in mind when considering your submissions.

Submission guidelines

1 – We are looking for one acts (30-45 minutes) and full length plays (90+ minutes) by Asian American playwrights.

2 – We are specifically seeking bold, imaginative new work in genres such as noir, science fiction, fantasy, horror, action adventure, or any mashup in-between. We want your play to have FUN and FANTASTICAL universes and indulge in the idea of play! No living room drama plays please!

3 – Selected plays will receive a public staged reading in Seattle, WA. Local writers from the Pacific Northwest are strongly encouraged to submit.

4- We will prioritize local playwrights, but this application is open to a national call. If accepted, your play will have a private and public staged reading, but we are not able to offer accommodation or transportation to Seattle at this time.

5 – All submitted plays will be considered for a full production by Pork Filled Productions.

6– Deadline for submissions is October 25^th 2024.

7 – Only emailed submissions with a completed Application Form will be considered. Please submit all materials as attachments in MS Word or PDF format to submissions@porkfilled.com.

8 – Playwrights may ONLY make one submission, and the plays must not have had a professional stage production at the time of submission. Readings and workshops are not considered productions.

9- If accepted will receive a stipend of 300$ for you time and dedication to your work

10- Winners will be announced Early January 2025

11- In Feb/March/April- Private readings will be had and the playwright will have time to rewrite the script and have feedback from actors, the director, and the dramaturge

12- There will be a public reading of the play at Theatre Off Jackson the week of 6/16/25

Past Unleashed Scripts Receiving Full Productions