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Christopher Chen

CHRISTOPHER CHEN

  
Nationality:    USA
facebook     email:    Click here to contact     Website:    Click here

Literary Agent:    Antje Oegel International  

Christopher Chen's plays include INTO the NUMBeRS, the WINDOW aGe, aNOMIeNaULIS, and LU SHeN the MaD. His work has been produced and developed by Central Works Theatre ensemble, Bay area Playwrights Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Beijing Fringe Festival, the Lark, hotINK Festival, Theatre Mu, Silk Road Theatre Project, Fluid Motion, Asian American Theater Company, and Crowded Fire, where he is currently developing his newest play the HUNDReD FLOWeRS PROJeCTS, about Mao Tse-Tung. Honors include a Ford Foundation emerging Writer of Color Grant, 2nd Place in the Belarus Free Theater International Competition of Modern Dramaturgy for Into the Numbers, Jerome Finalist, and Princess Grace and O'Neill Conference Semi-Finalist. He is currently a Resident Playwright at the Playwrights Foundation, a member of the Magic Theatre artist's Lab and Just Theater New Play Lab, and is co-director of the Asian American Theater Company New Works Incubator Program. He is a graduate of U.C. Berkeley, and holds an M.F.A. in Playwriting from S.F. State. He has been translated into Russian and Chinese.

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below is a list of Christopher Chen's plays - click on a Play Title for more information

         Anomienaulis         Caught         Hundred Flowers Project, The         Into the Numbers         Late Wedding, The         Lu Shen the Mad         Maya         Mishima Speaks To Beauty         Mutt         Radio Nostalgia In the Kingdom Of Rath         Window Age, The

Anomienaulis

Synopsis:
an absurdist take on Iphigenia at aulis, set in a realm of lost childhood. a restless army entertains itself with video games and sitcoms, while waiting for the wind that would carry their ships to war. In this existential space of paralysing doubt, indecision, and anticlimax, a march toward unstoppable violence grows inevitable. --

Notes:
Original Playwright - euripides

1st Produced:
Bay Area Playwrights    2009

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  6            Female:  3            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Caught

Synopsis:
A man walks into an art gallery and says he is Lin Bo the famous Chinese artist. He tells a harrowing story of his imprisonment in China - but is he telling the truth?

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
The Adrienne, Philadelphia, Pa    24 Oct 2014

Organisations:
InterAct Theatre

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Drama

Parts:
Male:  2            Female:  2            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Hundred Flowers Project, The

Synopsis:
During the rehearsal for a play about Mao Tse-Tung the actors' own life stories start becoming part of the play

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
-    -

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Drama

Parts:
Male:  3            Female:  3            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Into the Numbers

Synopsis:
In 2004, Iris Chang, famed author of the Rape of Nanking, a chronicle of one of the worst atrocities of the 20th Century, committed suicide at the age of 36. Structured as an interview gone awry, Into the Numbers explores the philosophical and psychological implications of researching genocide, as well as the toll media saturation plays in the process. What begins as a standard lecture and interview soon descends into a surreal nightmare. Ghosts from Chang's research appear and characters shift personas, as the celebrated author tries desperately to find order in the midst of mental chaos.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
Mu Performing    2007

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  3            Female:  2            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Late Wedding, The

Synopsis:
Marital customs of imagined tribes, long lost love and a grocery list

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
Crowded Fire, San Francisco    2014

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Drama

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Lu Shen the Mad

Synopsis:
Lu Shen, the legendary Chinese warrior travels through time all the while fighting an urge to kill his wife. He finds himself as an actor in a badly translated Chinese play; applying for the post of a janitor and an investor in cyber markets

Notes:
Based on A Chinese translation of the Greek play "Herakles"

1st Produced:
Thick House, San Francisco    2009

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
-

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Maya

Synopsis:
Three people find themselves in a strange, Kafka-esque prison with no recollection of how they got there or who they are. these sufferers of amnesia slowly piece together their shared past shaped by lost love and a brutal war. But soon they find that their memories diverge, and things are further complicated by their captor, a mad doctor, who casts doubts on what little they have to go on. His own agenda reveals a shocking take on spirituality. Maya is at once a political allegory and philosophical treatise that is brought to life by intense emotions and poetic language. at its core, it deals with the nature of the soul. Its surreal, neutral setting is inspired by Samuel Beckett and Sarah Kane. Its mood and language are inspired by Virginia Woolf and Kazuo Ishiguro.
- http://www.aatrevue.com

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
Aatc    2004

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Mishima Speaks To Beauty

Synopsis:
On November 25 Yukio Mishima with a band of his own soldiers broke into an army compound and took a general hostage. He made a patriotic speak to the soldiers and then disembowelled himself

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
-    -

Organisations:
One4all Theatre Company

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Gay/Lesbian historical character

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Mutt

Synopsis:
explores what it means to be hapa (of mixed Asian heritage) in America

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
La Val's Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berkeley    01 May 2013

Organisations:
Impact Theatre. A co-production with Ferocious Lotus Theatre Company

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Radio Nostalgia In the Kingdom Of Rath

Synopsis:
-

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
-    2011

Organisations:
Just Theater

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
-

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Window Age, The

Synopsis:
1920's, england in the aftermath of World War 1. the conception of the human mind is being reframed by the Modernist Movement in art and literature, the burgeoning field of psychoanalysis, and the emergence of a strange new affliction termed War Neurosis (shell shock). a Modernist writer, not unlike Virginia Woolf, and her troubled war veteran husband receive a visit from an old friend, a psychoanalyst not unlike Sigmund Freud. Over the course of the play, the single drawing room scene they share is replayed three times, each from a different perspective of the unconscious. each replay takes us further down into a kaleidoscopic inner universe, where windows upon windows reveal hidden fears, desires, and doubts about the the very nature of reality.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
Central Works, Berkeley    2009

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
-   -

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  2            Female:  1            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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