East West Players Announce Faces of the Future Playwriting Competition Winners

This review was originally posted on Blogging Los Angeles and has been republished here with permission.

By Chris

The LA-based Asian-American theater group East West Players recently announced winners of their “Faces of the Future” playwriting competition. The competition “explores the reality of multicultural America from an Asian American perspective.” The winning submissions did just that. Find a description of the winning plays and their authors after the jump.

First place winner ($5000) Christmas in Hanoi, by Eddie Borey, is about a mixed-race family returning to Vietnam for the first time since the war. Borey grew up in a Vietnamese and Irish-American family, and is now a screenwriter in the horror and science fiction genres. He has a horror story published on the podcast show Pseudopod, and working on a series of horror stories set in Los Angeles.

The second place winner ($2500) A Nice Indian Boy, by Madhuri Shekar, tells the story of nice Indian guy, Naveen Gavaskar, who wants to settle down with a nice Indian his parents would approve of. Shekar is California-born and was raised in India; she is currently pursuing an MFA in Dramatic Writing at the University of Southern California.

The third place winner ($1000) Samsara, by Lauren Yee, follows an American couple whose effort to have a child takes them to the commercial surrogacy industry in India. Born and raised in San Francisco, Yee is currently under commission from the Kennedy Center and Mu Performing Arts (supported by the Rockefeller MAP Fund)

Honorable mention goes to The Moments Before, a play inspired by William Dalrymple’s historical books about Indian colonial history written by Lina Patel, who is currently working on a commission for a new play from Yale Repertory Theater.

EWP will host readings of the winning submissions on the following dates at Little Tokyo’s David Henry Hwang Theater in downtown LA:

• 3rd place Samsara by Lauren Yee Wednesday, 3/14, 7:30pm
• 2nd place A Nice Indian Boy by Madhuri Shekar Saturday, 3/31, 2pm
• 1st place Christmas in Hanoi by Eddie Borey Saturday, 3/31, 4:30pm

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Chris Corning is a writer living in Los Angeles. He earned his MA at California State University, Northridge, and he works for a nonprofit agency that publishes literature for recovering drug addicts. He also blogs for blogging.la.