Greetings!
On behalf of Kyoung’s Pacific Beat, I am thrilled to share KPB’s Year in Review and the lessons learned in 2023.
Kyoung H. Park and Suki Terada-Ports Research for Kyoung’s Pacific Beat’s OTHER NO MORE (June 6, 2023, APICHA Community Health Center)
A SLOW RETURN TO LIVE THEATER
2023 marked the year we returned to live performance – it has been a slow and measured return, which took place only a few weeks ago with our staged reading of OTHER NO MORE on December 8th.
The COVID-19 pandemic, racialized and homophobic violence has not stopped because “things are back to normal.” This violence is ongoing, as I shared earlier this summer via Instagram following the murder of O’Shea Sibley in our neighborhood for vogueing at a local gas station.
If anything, we have been very careful in programming our activities to center Community Safety and Community Care, which are the main themes of our 2023-2024 season. The decision to maintain hybrid programming, both live and online, is to reduce the risks we are asking both our artists and audiences to make, with the understanding that virtual programming still ensures the safety and accessibility of our work to our audiences.
Kerry McCarthy and Salem Tsegaye, The New York Community Trust, and Alton Murray, Deputy Commissioner, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs (Mosaic Network & Fund Virtual Share-Out, January 26, 2023)
BUILDING CAPACITY AND RESEARCH
We began 2023 by concluding our facilitation of the Mosaic Network & Fund at the New York Community Trust, a private funder collaborative advancing the thriving of arts organizations of color in New York City. Since 2020, KPB’s facilitation of the Mosaic Network led to the distribution of $5M in support of over 170 arts organizations of color, which was publicly documented with a Citation from NYC Mayor Eric Adams.
The Spring of 2023 was spent strengthening the organizational capacity of our company by onboarding new Board members – Claudia Acosta, Jess Applebaum, Ryan Shen, Joe Tolbert – and securing a $195,000 multiyear, capacity building support grant from the New York Community Trust to increase our visibility and capability to tour new work, in order to further support NYC-based artists.
To define and advance peacemaking theater both as an organization and in our field, we are fortunate to receive a research planning grant from The Wallace Foundation to collaborate with Mike Klein, EdD, to conduct a national survey to research peacemaking devised theaters in America.
At a leadership level, I am grateful to have been a 2023 Rockwood Leadership Institute Fellow, a member of NYSCA/NYFA’s Community Arts Leaders program, Asian-American Federation’s Executive Directors Circle, A Call to Men’s Asian-American affinity space, and inaugural cohort member of the Brooklyn Arts Leadership Collaborative at the Brooklyn Museum, designed to support small arts non-profits of color based in Brooklyn.
Ishmael Thaahir and Ash Mayers – Kyoung’s Pacific Beat’s NERO (Upcoming Premiere: Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater)
INCREASING PRODUCTIVITY
Our Creating New Devised Works program supported the post-production of NERO, which included my editing of a 5-part, new media series. We are currently working on sound design by José Gorritti, scoring by Helen Yee, and visual and animations design by Yoon Choi and Marie Yokoyama – the latter being supported by a grant from the New York State Council for the Arts.
In addition, with support from the NEA and Brooklyn Arts Council, KPB conducted interviews with 12 elders from our community to develop the script for our latest work-in-progress OTHER NO MORE, which was presented as a free, public reading this December 2023 in collaboration with a new ensemble of queer, trans, and female performers of color including Alton Alburo, Un Joo Christopher, Ariel Estrada, Zoe Kim, Kaila Saunders, Futaba Shioda, Ishmael Thaahir and Dillon Yruegas. This reading was our first, live performance since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and our reading was followed by a moderated group discussion by Pauline Park – co-founder of New York Association of Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA) and Queens Pride House.
Our Community Co-Lab program continued our ongoing partnerships with GAPIMNY – Empowering Queer & Trans APIs and The Exponential Festival, and we welcomed Asians Fighting for Injustice and Caribbean Equality Project as new community partners. Together, we launched OTHER NO MORE through WEAVING HISTORIES, a community-wide conversation regarding the inequities in healthcare for queer people of color in conversation with Hassan Naveed, Executive Director of the New York City Office for the Prevention of Hate-Crimes and WHITENESS ON FIRE: WHERE ARE WE NOW?, a continuation of our community-led conversations on dismantling white supremacy and state violence, which began September 2020.
“Community Cares: All Together Now” Honorees and Special Guests (November 14, 2023)
ARE WE CARED FOR? ARE WE SAFE?
KPB’s inaugural season, “Community Safety, Community Cares” raises questions of how our communities will keep each other safe, and cared for, in systems that continuously fail queer people of color. Our bi-annual “Community Cares: All Together Now” virtual gala was honored to recognize the contributions of Arnaldo J. López (Theater Arts Leader) and Tiffany Vega-Gibson (outgoing KPB Board member), who were introduced by Maria Lopez de León (NEA National Artistic Advisory Committee) and Raquel Almazán (IndieSpace Board President).
Our season will resume Feb. 1, 2024 with a rough-cut screening of Act 2 of NERO at The Exponential Festival, followed by a panel with critics of color addressing the challenges of reviewing theater born in the pandemic. We hope you will join us and our guest speakers, Diep Tran (Editor of Playbill), Juan Michael Porter (HIV advocate and culture critic), in conversation with Theresa Buchheister (Artistic Director, The Exponential Festival) and myself.
KPB’s growth and thriving would not have been possible without the support of KPB’s Board, donors, funders, and most importantly, our staff. We are sad to announce that both Ishmael Thaahir, KPB’s Producing Director, and Kaila Saunders, our Marketing & Development Associate, have left our organization. I’d like to personally thank Ishmael and Kaila for helping me form our first, formidable administrative team in support of KPB’s organization and mission. Together, we’ve had the great privilege of enduring, surviving, and thriving through this pandemic – Ishmael and Kaila will be missed!
Kyoung’s Pacific Beat’s OTHER NO MORE (December 8, 2023, ART/NY)
ADVANCING PEACEMAKING THEATER
As we wrap-up 2023, I am reminded how our workshop development of NERO took place as the United States ended its War on Terror. Months later, the war in Ukraine began and this year, the ongoing protests to ceasefire in Gaza makes me deeply question our mission and our company’s effectiveness in creating peace.
While our work is challenging, I am reminded that the United States has been in a perpetual state of war since its founding. The United States of America has never been a nation in peace, which is why our mission is to invite artists and community-members to imagine a radical new culture, a culture of peace and non-violence.
I’d like to share with you some of the wise words Arnaldo López shared with us during our “Community Cares” virtual gala:
what is peacemaking in a war economy? in a war culture?
if we’ve grown used to the spectacle of war, what is the spectacle of peacemaking? can it show us another way?
what is the site of peacemaking theater? who are its actors, who are its audiences?
I hope you’ll join us through our live and virtual programming as we continue to explore these questions. And as the year comes to an end, we welcome your support of our peacemaking theater!
Peace,
Kyoung H. Park
Executive Artistic Director