January 11 – 27, 2018

The Tank
(312 W 36th Street, between 8th and 9th Ave., NYC)

Tickets: $25

The Exponential Festival will present the World Premiere of Kyoung's Pacific Beat's PILLOWTALK, in a co-production with The Tank.

Set in Brooklyn, 2017, PILLOWTALK brings to life one night in the lives of Sam and Buck, a recently married interracial couple. Through a formal exploration of theatrical naturalism and the codified gender norms of ballet's pas de deux, PILLOWTALK queers the intersections of race, gender, and class to challenge our assumptions of love and marriage. Confronting the backlash against marriage equality and #BlackLivesMatter, PILLOWTALK explores how liberation and oppression co-exist in our most intimate spaces.

Performances will be Thursday, January 11 at 8pm, Friday, January 12 at 4:30pm & 8pm, Saturday, January 13 at 3pm & 8pm, Monday, January 15 at 8pm, Wednesday, January 17 at 8pm, Thursday, January 18 at 8pm, Friday, January 19 at 8pm, Saturday, January 20 at 3pm & 8pm, Wednesday, January 24 at 8pm, Thursday, January 25 at 8pm, Friday, January 26 at 8pm, and Saturday, January 27 at 3pm & 8pm.

The performance will run approximately 75 minutes, with no intermission.

ABOUT

PILLOWTALK received a public reading at the Ma-Yi Writer’s LabFest and was developed in Target Margin Theater’s Institute for Collaborative Theater-Making and the Lark Play Development Center. A workshop production of PILLOWTALK was developed in part during a BRIClab Residency at BRIC House, followed by a post-showing dialogue featuring Katy Pyle. Kyoung’s Pacific Beat hosted a long-table titled “PILLOWTALK- Post Gay Marriage Politics” moderated by Dr. Stephanie Hsu at Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies “After Marriage” Conference and was featured in CUNY’s 2016 Prelude Festival. PILLOWTALK was written with support from a Creative Mellon Fellowship at the University of Washington and was developed in part during a residency at the Baryshnikov Arts Center and presented in La Guardia Performing Arts Center’s Rough Draft Festival 2017. The World Premiere of PILLOWTALK is funded, in part by NYSCA-A.R.T./New York Creative Opportunity Fund (A Statewide Theatre Regrant Program), WOVEN (We Oppose Violence Everywhere Now), and The Indie Theater Fund.

ARTIST

Kyoung H. Park (Playwright/Director) was born in Santiago, Chile and is the first Korean playwright from Latin America to be produced and published in the United States. He is author of Sex and Hunger, disOriented, Walkabout Yeolha, Tala, and many short plays including Mina, which is published in Seven Contemporary Plays from the Korean Diaspora in the Americas by Duke University Press. Kyoung writes and directs his own work as Artistic Director of Kyoung's Pacific Beat, a peacemaking theater company. He is a member of the Ma-Yi Writer's Lab, NYTW Usual Suspect, co-founder of The Sol Project, and serves in the Dramatist Guild's Devised Theater Committee. Fellowships: Creative Mellon Fellowship, Field Leadership Fund, Edward Albee Foundation, Theater of the Oppressed (Brazil), Target Margin Theater Inst. for Theater-Making; grants: Arvon Foundation (UK), GK Foundation (South Korea), Foundation for Contemporary Arts, TCG Global Connections, Princess Grace Special Projects; residencies: Baryshnikov Arts Center, LaGuardia Performing Arts Center, BRIC Arts Media Center, Performance Project @ University Settlement, Vermont Studio Center; 2010 UNESCO Aschberg-Laureate. Kyoung has been a grant panelist for the NEA, TCG, and ART/NY. MFA: Playwriting (Columbia University).

Kyoung's Pacific Beat is a peacemaking theater company based in Brooklyn, New York, which promotes a culture of peace through the production of new works of theater written and directed by Kyoung H. Park. KPB develops its work over the course of multiple years, in collaboration with artists from different cultures and different disciplines. During this process, KPB researches and engages in local communities to explore personal and communal experiences of oppression and transforms these stories through radical experimentations with theatrical forms, bringing together like-minded individuals that believe peace matters. Learn more at www.kyoungspacificbeat.org.

For more information and tickets, please visit the website at www.kyoungspacificbeat.org.