Our next featured artist is Thao P. Nguyen, a performance artist from the Bay Area. Thao (thaosolo.com) has been writing and performing solo shows since she joined the Solo Performance Workshop in 2007. Her full-length one-women comedy, Fortunate Daughter, was named one of the top ten Bay Area plays of 2013 by KQED: Year in the Arts! She was featured as a closing act at the San Francisco Theater Festival for four years running (2009-2012). Fortunate Daughter’s wildly successful runs in San Francisco, Berkeley, and at the New York International Fringe Festival have resulted in rave reviews and plenty of sold-out shows. The Berkeley Times says Nguyen’s “performance is virtuosic.” The San Francisco Chronicle warns readers, “Don’t miss!” The San Jose Mercury News says Nguyen is “fresh and entertaining with a natural humor that runs easily from gentle to slapstick.”
Q&A 1. How important is community and location to your identity as a writer and your writing process? I believe that my identity only has meaning in the ways that it exists in time, place, and community. Who I am is an answer to, an alignment with, and a challenge to the rules of society, of my family, of my communities of who I should be. As a queer Asian American writer in the Vietnamese diaspora, much of my work is about the imperfect and contradictory contexts in which I live. 2. Which 3 books have you read more than 3 times? Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison The Princess Bride by William Goldman The Lorax by Dr. Seuss 3. Who would you be if you had not become a writer? A puppeteer. I need a way to work through my control issues. 4. Do you have any advice for aspiring writers and poets? Write. Everyday. Write everyday. I think at least 90% of what I write is crap and maybe, if I’m lucky, 10% is “good.” You gotta write through all the bad to get to the nuggets of amazingness. ~
Additional information on Thao and her work: www.thaosolo.com www.facebook.com/thao.meanie A sample of Thao’s performance can be seen at the following link http://www.thaosolo.com/clips.html Do you enjoy reading diaCRITICS? Then please consider subscribing! See the options to the right, via feedburner, email, and networked blogs. Please take the time to rate this post (above) and share it (below). Ratings for top posts are listed on the sidebar. Sharing (on email, Facebook, etc.) helps spread the word about diaCRITICS. And join the conversation and leave a comment! Have you seen Thao P. Nguyen’s performance Fortunate Daughter? If so, tell us what you think!
