
About Last Weekend: Theater festival in Fort Worth allows AAPI artists to share their stories
Amphibian Stage, home to Sparkfest 2024, is located on 120 S Main St. pictured on June 12, 2024. (Alberto Silva Fernandez | Fort Worth Report)
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Zoë Kim was ready to tell her story.
Kim moved to the United States at 16 with a goal — pursue the American dream. She is currently doing so, writing and acting in her one-woman show, “Did You Eat? (밥 먹었니?).”
Kim began her writing process for the show in 2022, and found herself in Fort Worth to perform a staged reading at Sparkfest 2024. Put on by Amphibian Stage in the South Main Village, Sparkfest highlights Asian American and Pacific Islander artists from across the country and brings them together to share their stories.
Kathleen Culebro, founding artistic director of Amphibian Stage, wanted to expand Fort Worth’s community and allow these artists to feel seen and heard.
Kathleen Culebro, founding artistic director of Amphibian Stage, speaks about the importance of hosting Sparkfest on June 15, 2024. (Alberto Silva Fernandez | Fort Worth Report)
“I wanted an opportunity for actors to just showcase their brilliance and show it to the world and not have to fit any mold and just be celebrated for that,” Culebro said.
The festival featured three new plays, all written and performed by Asian American and Pacific Islander artists, as well as an acting competition.
Playwright and actress Alex Lin wrote her show, “barren,” after being inspired by the Lorca play “Yerma.”
The play is about a woman who can’t have children, but Lin wanted to put it into a more modern context. She realized that many women today are choosing to be single mothers in many different ways.
“I was really curious about this modern version of a mother,” Lin said. “What does she look like when she’s not really beholden to a prior reality that you didn’t need a male partner to conceive?”
Playwright and “barren” actor Alex Lin talks about her personal struggles with infidelity at Amphibian Stage on June 15, 2024. (Alberto Silva Fernandez | Fort Worth Report)
Lin was relieved to see that people understood the play’s message upon first reading. Lin also was more than excited about women’s reactions to her story.
“It’s been very powerful to see that this play has unlocked something for a lot of women. They feel like they can just come up to a stranger and say, ‘I had a miscarriage, thank you for writing this,’” Lin said.
Keiko Green, playwright of “You Are Cordially Invited To the End of the World!” was inspired to write her piece after the death of her mother-in-law.
“She passed away March 6, 2020, right at the start of the pandemic. I asked my husband, ‘Do you ever feel like your grief was taken from you?’ And he said, ‘No, it felt really right that the world stopped when my mom died,’” Green said. “That became a mind altering moment for me.”
Green’s play had two read-throughs throughout Sparkfest, and she is grateful for the opportunity to work and develop the show further.
Levi Richey talks to other Sparkfest participants at a lunch hosted at Soma Winery on June 15, 2024. (Alberto Silva Fernandez | Fort Worth Report)
Acting competitor Brooke Ishibashi felt supported by the Sparkfest community, even though she was terrified to step onto the stage.
The competition featured 10 actors out of hundreds of auditions, each having two rounds of competition before the final. The rounds consisted of monologues and scenes, each with live judging and on-the-spot feedback that the actors were required to incorporate into their next reading. First prize at the end of the competition received $5,000, with second and third place receiving $4,000 and $3,000, Ishibashi said.
Ishibashi, as a competitor in the acting competition, has also been able to view the other plays without the stress of writing or acting within them.
“It’s an opportunity to connect on a very human level,” Ishibashi said. “You always worry as an Asian artist when you tell a story — if someone who doesn’t look like you can relate to you.”
Ishibashi was able to find that out for herself during Kim’s reading of “Did You Eat? (밥 먹었니?).”
Laurel Collins talks to other Sparkfest participants at a lunch hosted at Soma Winery on June 15, 2024. (Alberto Silva Fernandez | Fort Worth Report)
“The man who was sitting next to me during the reading of Zoë’s piece, he was an old white man who I presume was from Texas because he seemed to be from the community, he cried with me,” Ishibashi said.
Ishibashi said that the interaction between her and that man opened her mind to more, as she realized that people from Texas and people from Asian cultures can relate to one another easier than she previously thought.
As for Kim, her goals for her play were fairly simple.
“Everyone who experiences my play now and in the future is to walk away feeling inspired to love more, to love more deeply and to love more generously,” Kim said with a smile. “And to be kind to others. That would be great.”
Even though it’s inspired many, even those who look nothing alike, Kim wants just one thing: “I hope that just one person finds it to be helpful.”
Ryan Thorpe is an audience engagement fellow at the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at ryan.thorpe@fortworthreport.org.
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