In keeping with our mission, we began this writers lab for Việt and Việt-American playwrights in an effort to inject new perspectives into the American Theatre canon. We are tired of the exploitation of our people’s trauma and history and instead want to look forward and invest in a more holistic exploration of the Vietnamese identity.

Representing the North Eastern region will be Quentin Nguyen-duy, T.Le, and Tuânminh A Đỗ (Minh). The writers will spend seven months meeting digitally to participate in story sharing circles; attend panel discussions with Theatre professionals; and will receive time, resources and support to write new works which will culminate as in-person readings presented in August.

Quentin Nguyen-duy (he/him)

Hometown/Homebase: Ashland, Oregon, based in Brooklyn, New York.

Quentin Nguyen-duy is a mixed Vietnamese-American actor who began to write plays after he devised a scene about a clap-on, clap-off light for a playwriting class. This evolved into his first full-length play Amputees, which was then produced in the Boston University Fringe Festival. After, he got hired as a staff writer on an episodic miniseries for the Boston Lyric Opera titled “desert in,” and then co-wrote “#SinceYallWantMeToBeWhite,” about a student in Zoom detention after making a viral Tik Tok. As an actor, he got to play a Vietnamese cop dude on a couple episodes of Law & Order, lead Company One’s production of Vietgone and he just shot a pilot for Freeform called AZNBBGRL. His objective as a storyteller is to decimate stories of people and places that aren’t usually seen on stage, and in turn, contextualize the narrative of outsiders like himself.

Trang Le (she/hers)

Hometown: Central Massachusetts

Born in Vietnam, but raised in Central Massachusetts, T.Le is a Vietnamese American artist. Deeply interested in post migration, her works in poetry and photographic collage focus on her experiences of homeland, language, and belonging. A finalist for the BLR Spring 2022 Poetry Contest, her poetry appears in SWWIM, Somewhere We Are Human Anthology, and elsewhere. Her art can be found at www.hellotle.com.

Tuânminh A Đỗ (he/him/em)

Hometown/Homebase: Hanoi-Warsaw, Vietnam-Poland. Based in NYC.

Tuânminh A Đỗ (Minh) is a Việt-Polish interdisciplinary, immigrant artist based in NYC. His artistic mission demands generating new, conscious content and reforming old conventions to interrogate, question, support, represent, heal and bring joy to all aspects of our innate humanity. To comfort the discomforted and discomfort the comforted. His artistic practice involves writing, performance, filmmaking, devising, music, choreography and directing. Current Artist-In-Residence at University Settlement: The Performance Project. Recent projects involve: “Ma-Yi Shortfest,” (2022) “First Violin: Darshan,” (2021) at Mabou Mines, by Sean Devare; “Lời Ru,” (Lullaby) (2021) Short Film, won Best International Film at Gona Film Awards, Official Selection at MAM Fest, Artist-At-Home program at Theater Mitu;