I was commissioned by Queens Theatre to write a play set in Flushing Meadows park. I ended up with Race Day, which was inspired by my time on Ma-Yi’s dragon boat racing team. Click here for more info about the play.
Also got a very nice review in the New York Times! Excerpt:
“The park’s sprawling acreage includes the museum; Arthur Ashe Stadium, site of the Open; the theater itself, a Philip Johnson building huddled snugly beneath his concrete observation towers for the 1964 World’s Fair; and Meadow Lake, site of the annual Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival. That’s the setting for Don Nguyen’s terrific mini-comedy “Race Day,” in which Maddie (a delightfully acerbic Dominique Brillon) and Leah (Jo Mei) come to watch their younger sister, Kara, lead her perennially disastrous team to, surely, yet another humiliation…I know people call us the Bad News Bears of dragon boat racing,” Kara (an endearingly intense Precious Sipin) tells her paddlers in what passes for a pep talk before the competition starts. Beautifully directed by Ms. Hodges, this surprisingly moving play is the apex of the program’s first half.” Laura Collins-Hughes, New York Times