The University at Albany Department of Theatre is pleased to present Letters to a Student Revolutionary as its first offering of the 2007-08 season. The production will run for eight performances in the Studio Theatre at the University at Albany Performing Arts Center on the uptown campus from October 19-27, 2007.

Written and directed by guest artist Elizabeth Wong, this powerful and disarmingly funny play is about friendship and political awakening. Two young women -- one from the USA and the other from China -- have a chance encounter which leads them to a charming, often poignant ten-year correspondence cut abruptly and tragically short by the June 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. This bittersweet tale seeks to make sense of history -- how we participate in it and how we are overwhelmed by it. By focusing on the loves and losses, desires and disappointments of the two main characters, the play explores ideas of capitalism and communism and, ultimately, becomes a clarion call to remember the price of democracy while asking whether democratic ideals are a suitable American export in today’s complex world.

This award-winning original work uses a disarmingly breezy presentational style along with delightful theatrical devices such as a Greek chorus to break geography, time and space. This bold, yet deceptively simple, approach brings to life the dying art of letter writing as shown between two passionate and confused young girls struggling to grow up independent and free.

Elizabeth Wong graduated from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts with an MFA in dramatic writing. Her award-winning play China Doll, about the sensual and glamorous life of America’s first Chinese-American movie star Anna May Wong, premiered Off-Broadway at the West End Theatre this April. Her new musical for young audiences, The Magical Bird, recently premiered at Honolulu Theatre for Youth. Her other plays include: Kimchee & Chitlins, The Love Life of a Eunuch and Dating & Mating in Modern Times. Her work has been produced by Mixed Blood Theatre in Minneapolis, Denver Center Theatre for the Performing Arts, Omaha Magic Theatre, Orphan Girl Theatre, Cincinnati Playhouse In the Park, Honolulu Theatre For Youth, Actors Theatre of Louisville, to name a few. The Kennedy Center commissioned her to write an opera libretto from her adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince with Grammy Award-winning composer Michael Silversher. Wong was a Disney Writing Fellow and a writer on ABC’s ground-breaking sitcom All-American Girl with Margaret Cho. She is also a recipient of a Yaddo fellowship and a UCROSS Foundation fellowship and was the inaugural 2005 writer-in-residence at the Ecole Cantonale d’art du Valais in Sierre, Switzerland. She is a member of PEN, Dramatist Guild, ASSITEJ, Playwrights Center in Minneapolis and the Writers Guild of America West.

The schedule for Letters to a Student Revolutionary includes performances on Friday and Saturday, October 19 & 20 at 8pm; Sunday, October 21 at 2pm; Wednesday through Friday, October 24-26 at 8pm and Saturday, October 27 at 2pm. There will be a panel discussion following the performance on October 21.

Tickets are $12 for the general public and $8 for students, seniors and UAlbany faculty/staff and may be purchased through the Performing Arts Center Box Office. For further information, contact the Box Office at (518) 442-3997 or visit the Performing Arts Center website at www.albany.edu/pac.

There will also be a special morning matinee performance of the production for high school groups. This performance is scheduled for Tuesday, October 23 at 10am. Information and reservations for this matinee are available by calling the Performing Arts Center office at (518) 442-5738.

Elizabeth Wong will give a free talk on Wednesday, October 17 at 4:15pm in the University’s Science Library Standish Room as part of the New York State Writers Institute series. Information on this event can be obtained by calling the Writers Institute at 442-5620.

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