ALICE TUAN

Alice Tuan is an internationally produced and nationally acclaimed playwright. The New York Times has hailed her writing as ‘cunning’ and ‘deeply dramatic.’ The Mark Taper Forum invited Ms. Tuan to join their Mentor/Playwright Project from her first script, LAST OF THE SUNS, and awarded her the Richard E. Sherwood Award for emerging artist in 2000. That same year, she was again given emerging artist recognition by New York’s Downtown Arts Project with The Colbert Award for Excellence. Through the Taper, Ms. Tuan’s work was introduced to Paula Vogel, the Pulitzer-Prize-winning playwright of HOW I LEARNED TO DRIVE. Impressed with Ms. Tuan’s natural talent for dialogue and ability to think outside the box, Vogel handpicked her to study at Brown University’s heralded MFA program in Creative Writing, speaking of her ability to ‘create wonder, break rules, and forge theatrical spectacle.’ At Brown, Ms. Tuan developed Virtual Hypertext Theater, which simulates computer dynamics in a physical stage space. Virtual Hypertext Theater culminated in her thesis project COASTLINE, which was performed on both coasts and eventually traveled to Scotland’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2005. NEW CULTURE FOR A NEW COUNTRY was Ms. Tuan’s debut solo performance, seen in New York as a part of the site specific THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE LOWER EAST SIDE, the last show to be produced by Anne Hamburger and En Garde Arts. A new phase of work developed at this time, challenging the puritan undertone of U.S. culture. AJAX (POR NOBODY) was produced and directed by Jim Simpson at New York’s Flea Theater, and ran for a year before traveling to the Melbourne Fringe Festival in September 2001. The play is archived in the Billy Rose Collection in the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. Ms. Tuan’s adaptation of Middleton and Dekker’s THE ROARING GIRLE is a Jacobean citizen play clashed with modern day New York. It was commissioned and produced by the Foundry Theater in 2004. At this time she was commissioned by the Mark Taper Forum to write 4 DAYS IN RED GULCH, which spans a decade in Los Angeles, from Prohibition to Black Tuesday. Her play HIT was commissioned by NY’s Public Theatre. Ms. Tuan’s national collaboration with Philadelphia’s New Paradise Laboratories is a spectacle about bachelor/ette parties incorporating film with a physical stage play. It was commissioned by the Actors Theater of Louisville and premiered at this year’s 2007 Humana Festival of New American Plays. You can hear the podcast of the BATCH process at http://kadmusarts.com/blog/?p=318. Ms. Tuan has done a Sundance residency at UCROSS and was a finalist in the Sundance Screenwriting Lab. She has taught playwriting at the Michener Center for Writers, Los Angeles Theater Center, East West Players and Cal Arts. She also taught ESL in China and Los Angeles and is fluent in Mandarin Chinese. Ms Tuan is based in Los Angeles.