Ralph B. Peña is a founding member and the current artistic director of Ma-Yi Theater Company, an

Obie Award The Obie Awards or Off-Broadway Theater Awards are annual awards originally given by ''The Village Voice'' newspaper to theatre artists and groups in New York City. In September 2014, the awards were jointly presented and administered with the A ...

and Drama Desk winning

Asian American theatre Asian American theatre is theatre written, directed or acted by Asian Americans. From initial efforts by four theatre companies in the 1960s, Asian-American theatre has grown to around forty groups today. Early productions often had Asian themes ...

group based in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. As a playwright, his works include ''Flipzoids'', ''Project: Balangiga,'' ''This End Up,'' and ''Loose Leaf Bindings.'' He received an

for his work on The Romance of Magno Rubio. Recent directing credits include Lloyd Suh's "The Wong Kids in the Secret of the Space Chupacabra Go! (Children's Theater Company, MN, and New York), Michael Lew's ''Microcrisis'', Lloyd Suh's ''Children of Vonderly'', Nicky Paraiso's ''House/Boy'' for LaMama ETC, and the Singapore and Dublin Theater Festivals, Nicolas Pichay's "Macho Dancer: A Musical," A. Rey Pamatmat's "''House Rules'', and

Hansol Jung Hansol Jung is a South Korean translator and playwright. Jung is a recipient the Whiting Award in drama and three of her plays were listed on the 2015 Kilroys' List. Jung is a member of the Ma-Yi Theater Writers' Lab and was a Hodder Fellow at ...

's "''Among The Dead''." Ralph was born in

Manila Manila ( , ; fil, Maynila, ), officially the City of Manila ( fil, Lungsod ng Maynila, ), is the capital of the Philippines, and its second-most populous city. It is highly urbanized and, as of 2019, was the world's most densely populate ...

, the Philippines, to Alfonso S. Peña, and Josephine D. Bayron. He spent his younger years in Manila, and

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

, before moving permanently to the U.S. in 1984. During his time in the Philippines, Ralph helped found a street performance company called Bodabil, later renamed UP Peryante. The group, led by Chris Millado, used

vaudeville Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition ...

as a form of protest theater against the Marcos dictatorship. His experiences in performing and organizing would serve him well after founding Ma-Yi Theater Company in New York City, in the summer of 1989, along with colleagues from the Philippines. He became Ma-Yi Theater’s Artistic Director in 1996. Since then, and in partnership with Jorge Z. Ortoll, Ma-Yi’s Executive Director, Ralph has worked to make Ma-Yi Theater Company one of the country’s leading venue for new Asian American Theater. As part of his work with Ma-Yi Theatre, Peña directed the world premiere of

's '' Among the Dead'' in 2016. He resides in New York City.

References

* ''New York Times'' review
"The Wong Kids"
* ''Twin Cities'' review,
"The Wong Kids"

TDF feature by Helen Shaw

* ''Asian Theater Journal''

* ''The Village Voice'',
Asian Equation
* ''MELUS'' article
"A Hunger For History"
Obie Award recipients American people of Filipino descent Living people Year of birth missing (living people) {{AsianAmerican-stub

See also

References