49TH MILESTONE SEASON
NuWorks Festival
June 13-21, 2026
Theatre Row: One
410 West 42nd Street (view map)
Pan Asian Repertory Theatre’s
annual festival of new experimental works
by Asian American artists.
Pan Asian Rep culminates its 49th Milestone Season with the annual NuWorks Festival, an experimental series of self-created work from innovative artists exploring an eclectic range of genres and techniques using poetry, text, dance and music.
CATCH ALL FOUR PROGRAMS IN THE FESTIVAL!
Click the buttons below to learn more about each program.
NUWORKS 2026: PROGRAM A
Saturday, June 13 at 7:00 p.m.
Thursday, June 18 at 7:00 p.m.
Happy To Be Here
TBD
Created by Miguel Sutedjo
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Happy To Be Here
TBD
Tanya Ko-Hong
Until the First Snow
Amid the 1992 Los Angeles Riots, Kelly travels to her grandmother’s home on the outskirts ofSeoul, where past and present blur and fractured memories uncover a buried family history thatreshapes her sense of identity and inner strength.
Playwright: Tanya Ko-Hong (고현혜)
Dramaturg: Dr. Ah-Jung Kim
Actors: Ellen Ko, Audrey Kim Chung
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Until the First Snow
Tanya Ko-Hong (고현혜) is an award-winning Korean American playwright, poet, translator, and cultural curator whose work explores memory, war, displacement, and bilingual identity. She is the author of five books, including The War Still Within (2019). Her multilingual play Comfort Woman (위안부: 푸른꽃), adapted from her poetry, has been developed through staged readings and performances in New York and Los Angeles. Ko-Hong’s honors include the Yun Dong-ju Korean American Literature Award, the Dritëro Agolli Award, and the Medada Award at the Ditët e Naimit International Poetry Festival. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles.
NUWORKS 2025: PROGRAM B
Sunday, June 14 at 3:00 p.m.
Friday, June 19 at 7:00 p.m.
Katie May Porter
A Water Play
This is a story about how water holds our stories - our past, our present, and our future – and how words and water can both hurt and heal our communities.
Director: Reena Dutt
Writer/Dramaturg: Jaisey Bates / The Peoplehood
Sound Designer: Pan-Pan Gou
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A Water Play
Katie May Porter (Artist/Performer/Writer) is an actor, filmmaker, engineer, and native New Yorker. She has a degree in Chemical Engineering with a minor in Theater Arts from MIT – and has long since been balancing both her left-brain engineering and right-brain creative worlds. Katie has collaborated with The Peoplehood since 2019 and bonded over issues of safe water. Past performances include work with: Ma-Yi Theater Company/2G, National Arts Club, Asian American International Screenplay Competition, Samuel French Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival, Cape May Stage, The Vagrancy, and the Open Fist Theatre Company. IG: @ActressEngineer
New York City premieres include: Letter (Downtown Urban Arts Festival), Everest (NAAP Discover Musicals), VOICE (Time Capsule Project, Commissioned by Mai Ozeki), The Show Must Go On (The Sixth Festival), Serenity and Delight (Ren Gyo Soh), The Restaurant of Many Orders (MuSE), and MINORU: Scrape the Sky (The Tank). Akashi made her off-Broadway songwriting debut in Village Songs at the Rattlestick Theatre. As a lyricist, Momo released her first J-pop single, “Tokimeki,” with music by Zachary Catron and vocals by Joo Won Shin (Squid Game), which received nearly 20,000 streams within its first year of release.
She is a member of the Dramatists Guild and PlayPenn’s writers' cohort program.
Tea on Robert
TBD
Created by: Amy Pan
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Tea on Robert
TBD
NUWORKS 2025: PROGRAM C
Tuesday, June 16 at 7:00 p.m.
Saturday, June 20 at 7:00 p.m.
ALLIES
TBD
Created by: Jeff Liu
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ALLIES
TBD
She Said Fuck That's a Pretty Giant Deep Ocean
TBD
Created by: Jingyi Luna Peng
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She Said Fuck That's a Pretty Giant Deep Ocean
TBD
NUWORKS 2025: PROGRAM D
Wednesday, June 17 at 7:00 p.m.
Sunday, June 21 at 3:00 p.m.
Patrick Lee
THE TOILET QUEEN
A sharp-witted lady transforms a yard full of discarded toilets into a hilarious and heartfelt protest garden that celebrates her community and refuses to be ignored.
Actors: Penelope Hsu & Jessica Carmona
Written and Directed by: Patrick Lee
Art Direction by: Ka Po Ng
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THE TOILET QUEEN
Patrick Lee is a New York–based storyteller whose work spans theatre, documentary, and broadcast journalism. An Emmy and Peabody Award-winning journalist with more than two decades of experience shaping network news and feature stories, he brings a deeply human lens to his creative work. His plays blend humor, social observation, and emotional honesty, often drawing inspiration from overlooked histories and everyday people. Through his theatre work, Patrick focuses on telling Asian American stories with nuance, humanity, and heart—creating space for voices and experiences that are too often unseen or simplified. His work aims to entertain, provoke conversation, and foster meaningful connections with audiences.
How to Catch Crickets With Your Bare Hands
TBD
Created by: Camilla Shae
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How to Catch Crickets With Your Bare Hands
TBD
Isabel Beatriz Tongson
MET Cute
Trey and Maya are on a first date. It's going well! Sort of... In the MET, where relics of their cultures are kept behind glass, these two students attempt to connect with their heritages and histories in spite of the white plaster walls that house them. As they move through the museum, the magic from within themselves comes alive, and Trey and Maya are able to connect with these artifacts in spite of the sentient MET’s active efforts to stop them. This rom-com asks– what is it to have your own lost culture dangled before you, just out of reach? Will Maya and Trey find what they are looking for at the MET? Will they be up for the second date?
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Isabel Beatriz Tongson is a Filipina-American playwright, actor, and director. Select writing accolades: Lin-Manuel Miranda Family Fellowship, the Kenneth Janes Award, The Dasha Epstein Award in Playwriting, the Dasha Epstein Award for New York Stage and Film, two-time winner of the Blank Theatre Young Playwrights Festival, winner of Best in Show at the Central Florida Theatre Festival for Dramatic Script, winner of the Valencia College BIPOC Playwrights Festival, finalist of the #ENOUGH Plays Project, finalist of the Et Alia Theater Lab, and
semi-finalist for the Gary Garrison National Ten-Minute Play Award. Rep: Rebel Creative Group isabeltongson.com