Alice Tuan is an

Asian American Asian Americans are Americans of Asian ancestry (including naturalized Americans who are immigrants from specific regions in Asia and descendants of such immigrants). Although this term had historically been used for all the indigenous peopl ...

playwright, teacher and performer.

Education

Tuan earned a

bachelor's degree A bachelor's degree (from Middle Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to si ...

economics Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics anal ...

from

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...

. In 1997, she earned a MFA in

creative writing Creative writing is any writing that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, or technical forms of literature, typically identified by an emphasis on narrative craft, character development, and the use of literary ...

from

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

Awards

In the year 2000, Los Angeles’

Mark Taper Forum The Mark Taper Forum is a 739-seat thrust stage at the Los Angeles Music Center designed by Welton Becket and Associates on the Bunker Hill section of Downtown Los Angeles. Named for real estate developer Mark Taper, the Forum, the neighborin ...

honored her with the Richard E. Sherwood Award in June, while New York's Downtown Arts Project awarded her the Colbert Award for Excellence that fall. She was also given a New Voices Playwriting Award from East West Players. Two years prior, Tuan was endowed with the NEA/ TCG Residency Program for Playwrights through Los Angeles’ East West Players (1998–2000) while also given a Playwright in Residence grant at the Los Angeles Theatre Center (1998–1999). Upon graduating from

with an MFA in creative writing in 1997, Tuan was the winner of the Perishable Theater 5th Annual Woman's Playwriting Festival. She was also awarded the

Drama-Logue Award The Drama-Logue Award was an American theater award established in 1977, given by the publishers of Drama-Logue newspaper, a weekly west-coast theater trade publication. Winners were selected by the publication's theater critics, and would rece ...

for Best Play that year for scribing ''Ikebana''.

Plays

The best known of these plays, ''Ajax (por nobody)'', had a year run at New York's Flea Theater and traveled to the

Melbourne Fringe Festival The Melbourne Fringe Festival is an annual independent arts festival in Melbourne, Australia, usually over three weeks from late September to early October. Held since 1982, the Festival includes a wide variety of art forms, including theatre, com ...

in September 2001. ''Last of the Suns'', her first play, tells of a Chinese Nationalist army general shriveling away under the harsh California sun as his failed and defecting ice-skating granddaughter comes to visit him on his 100th birthday. It premiered at

Berkeley Repertory Theatre Berkeley Repertory Theatre is a regional theater company located in Berkeley, California. It runs seven productions each season from its two stages in Downtown Berkeley. History The company was founded in 1968, as the East Bay's first resident p ...

and was later produced by New York's

Ma-Yi Theater Company Ma-Yi Theater Company is a professional, not-for-profit, Obie Award and Drama Desk Award-winning theater company based in New York City that was founded in 1989. Ma-Yi Theater is headed by executive director Jorge Ortoll and artistic director Ral ...

. More recent works include the Virtual Hypertext Play ''Coastline'', which traveled to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August 2005, and ''BATCH: An American Bachelor/ette Party Spectacle,' ''directed by Whit MacLaughlin and in collaboration with New Paradise Laboratories.

Teaching

Tuan has facilitated playwright workshops at all levels throughout the United States. She taught English as a Second Language (ESL) in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...

and

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world ...

References

Colbert Award for Excellence
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tuan, Alice Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 21st-century American dramatists and playwrights American dramatists and playwrights of Asian descent