Script-In-Hand Series reading of Brandan Ngo’s “Where Are You From?”

Playwright Brandan Ngo, a member of Plan-B’s Theatre Artists of Color Writing Workshop, is an actor and writer who fortunately enjoys both acting and writing. His short play, "Where Are You From?" will be read as the final installment of this season's Script-In-Hand Series on Sunday, February 9 at 2pm (Tessman Auditorium, Main Branch, City Library) followed by pieces from People Productions, Pinnacle Acing Company and Wasatch Theatre Company as part of the Edward Lewis Theatre Festival at the Main Branch of the City Library. Click here for free-but-required tickets.

In “Where Are You From?” an Asian-American teen tries to figure out what it means for him to be Asian and American. High school is tough … navigating race-relations is allegedly tougher. Hopefully, there’s nothing some honesty, a bit of theatrics, and a passing knowledge of Cantonese can’t accomplish.

The thing about being an immigrant, or a child of an immigrant, or any shade of that spectrum in the United States, is that your story is never the singular defining story of your culture, your creed, or your ethnicity. What this play is, then, is one or two of those hundreds of millions of stories. It is my story, and it is my friends’ stories, stirring in my second-generation brain for 26 years and finally manifesting itself onstage. Hopefully, it is your story, too. Or even better, hopefully it is not. Hopefully, you learn today that your story has yet to be told, and that the stage is hungry for it.

CAST
Cal Crnich
Kallie Filanda
Tyler Fox
Samantha Matsukawa
Katelin Jones Nall
Joshua Shimizu
Benjamin Young

DIRECTOR
Jerry Rapier

STAGE MANAGER
Sam Allen