Ma-Yi Theater Company is presenting the world premiere of Daniel K. Isaac’s ONCE UPON A (korean) TIME. Mixing traditional Korean fables with the horrors of the Korean War, Isaac’s new play, running August 23-September 18 at La MaMa, is a funny and deeply moving analog for the experiences of the Korean American diaspora. Isaac deftly moves his characters through time, tracing the legacies of trauma that are passed from one generation to the next, and the various coping mechanisms each one uses to soldier on.
Producing Artistic Director Ralph B. Peña will direct the cast featuring Sonnie Brown, Sasha Diamond, David Lee Huynh, Teresa Avia Lim, Jon Norman Schneider, David Shih and Jillian Sun.
Daniel K. Isaac (he/him) is a queer Korean American actor and writer based in New York City.
Daniel’s writing has been championed by Ma-Yi Theater, National Endowment for the Arts, MTC’s Groundworks Lab, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Barrington Stage, NYTW, Page73’s Interstate73, Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Youngblood, Queens Theatre, The Tank, TheatreC, Leviathan Lab, and Lambda Literary.
As an actor, Daniel has been seen on off-Broadway NYC stages in The Chinese Lady (Drama Desk Nomination for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play, Ma-Yi/The Public); Travel/Turn Step, You Never Touched the Dirt (Clubbed Thumb); The Chinese Lady (Ma-Yi/Barrington Stage), The Gentleman Caller (Abingdon), Sagittarius Ponderosa (NAATCO), Underland (59E59), and Anna Nicole the Opera (BAM).
Daniel’s film and television credits include six seasons as ‘Ben Kim’ on “Billions” (Showtime); “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,” “The Deuce,” “Crashing,” Too Big To Fail (HBO); The Drummer (opposite Danny Glover); “The Expecting” (Quibi); Money Monster (dir. Jodie Foster); “The Jim Gaffigan Show” (TV LAND); “Person of Interest” (CBS); and ‘Jeremy’ on “The Other Two” (Comedy Central). Training: USCD, BADA. DanielKIsaac.com
Since its founding in 1989, Ma-Yi Theater Company has distinguished itself as one of the country’s leading incubators of new work shaping the national discourse about what it means to be Asian American today. Please visit http://www.ma-yitheatre.org and for more information.
La MaMa is located at 66 E. 4th st. Click here for tickets and more information.
Ma-Yi Theater Company
Founded in 1989, Ma-Yi Theater Company is a Drama Desk, Lortel, and Obie Award-winning, Off-Broadway not-for-profit organization whose primary mission is to develop and produce new and innovative plays by Asian American writers.
Its numerous acclaimed productions include Mike Lew’s Teenage Dick and Bike America, Qui Nguyen’s The Inexplicable Redemption of Agent G and Soul Samurai (with Vampire Cowboys), and Hansol Jung’s Among The Dead. Other productions include: Rescue Me by Michi Barall, Lloyd Suh’s The Chinese Lady and Lonnie Carter’s The Romance of Magno Rubio.
The Ma-Yi Writers Lab, a signature program founded in 2004, is the largest resident company of Asian-American Playwrights ever assembled. The Lab emboldens a new generation of Asian American artists to voice their experiences, while developing a steady stream of quality new works by Asian American Playwrights for Ma-Yi’s own performing repertory. New works developed at the Writers Lab have gone on to successful productions around the country, at such theaters as Victory Gardens, Laguna Playhouse, Long Wharf Theater, Woolly Mammoth and the Actors Theater of Louisville, to name a few.
Ma-Yi’s productions have earned 10 Obie Awards, 5 Henry Hewes Award nominations, a Drama Desk nomination for Best Play and the Special Drama Desk Award for “more than two decades of excellence and for nurturing Asian-American voices in stylistically varied and engaging theater.”
Ma-Yi Theater is under the leadership of Producing Artistic Director Ralph B. Peña.
Backstage Pass with Lia Chang 