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Kristina Wong
The COVID pandemic of 2020 changed all our lives, probably forever.
Kristina Wong, performance artist and playwright extraordinaire, was midway in the second show of a projected national tour when everything shut down. Talk about a wet-blanket event.
Stuck in her Koreatown (Los Angeles) apartment watching the news, a friend texted her that hospitals were in need of masks. Since Wong makes her own set pieces and props for her shows, she put her sewing machine to work and made a mask, posting on Facebook that she was taking requests.
She didn’t foresee the number of requests she’d get, but she soon found herself looking for other women who sew and would be willing to make masks as well. She found lots of them, and decided to dub each an “Auntie.”
The result was what she called her “Auntie Sewing Squad” (ASS), and that experience is the topic of her current show “Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord.”
Chay Yew directs the show, on a malleable scenic design by Junghyun Georgia Lee. Linda Cho’s costumes, Amith Chandrashker’s lighting and Mikhail Fiksel’s sound design and Cat Heyner’s projections complete the fine tech team.
Wong also reminds us of other awful things that have happened or gotten worse since the pandemic started, like George Floyd’s death. “Now they’re sewing for anti-racism,” she notes, and “the second wave of anti-Asian hate nearly broke me.”
On the other hand, we hear about RBG-themed masks, and that kids have been enlisted to make masks. And “I’m being studied by academics.”
She is also the the only Asian American woman to be nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Wong gives us a funny but serious evening of recent history, wondering, for example, why the U.S. launched a space shot rather than conquering COVID.
When the Aunties retire in 2021, Wong notes “We should be running FEMA and the CIA as well.”
Now there’s a thought.
And she leaves each audience member with a handmade mask.
The details
“Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord” plays through Oct. 16 at La Jolla Playhouse’s Potiker Theater, 2910 La Jolla Village Drive, on the UCSD campus.
Shows Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:30 p.m.; Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m.; Saturday at 2 and 8 pm.; Sunday at 2 and 7 p.m.
When: Opens Tuesday and runs through Oct. 16. 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays and Wednesdays. 8 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays. 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays. 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays
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