Asian/American in Harvard Square and Torched

November 12, 8PM

Restricted Capacity: SOLD OUT! 

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Asian/American in Harvard Square

Written by Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro

Directed by Michelle Aguillon

Asian/American in Harvard Square is a series of vignettes focusing on five people who only have three things in common: they are in Harvard Square, they are Asian-American, and they all face racist microaggressions from white people, whether they are strangers, acquaintances, or old friends. Tensions build in this exploration of Asian-American lives and experiences in Cambridge, MA. 

Torched

Written by Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro

Directed by Michelle Aguillon

In Torched, a university dean gets dangerously carried away as she eulogizes Kathleen Chang(e), an Asian American performance artist and political activist who died of self-immolation.

About the Playwright

Rosanna's plays include Before I Leave You (Huntington Theatre Company), Behind Enemy Lines (Pan Asian Repertory, N.Y.C.), Mishima (East West Players, L.A.), Barrancas (Magic Theater, S.F.), Pablo and Cleopatra (New Theatre), Mexico City (the Boston Women on Top Festival), and Martha Mitchell  (Edinburgh Fringe Festival and Six Figures Theater, N.Y.C.).  She wrote and narrated the documentary Japanese American Women: A Sense of Place, directed by Leita Luchetti (the Smithsonian Institution and PBS Seattle).  Rosanna was a Huntington Playwriting Fellow (2010) and a MCC Artist Fellow in Playwriting (2011).  Her shorter plays have been anthologized by Baker’s Plays, Heinemann, Meriwether, PlaySource, Smith and Kraus, and Charta Books.  She is a member of Asian American Playwrights Collective and MUTT, A Pack of Playwrights.  In 2020 the Cambridge Community Foundation included Rosanna in the inaugural group of twenty Cambridge Cultural Visionaries.

The Umbrella Stage Company previously sponsored Rosanna for the Boston Theater Marathon earlier this year.

The Umbrella Stage Company @ Home New Works series features short-length original works by local playwrights written to optimize virtual performance environments and digital theater experiences. 

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