Oskar Eustis, Artistic Director of New York's Public Theater, moderates a discussion on Asian and Asian American theater with visiting Artist-in-Residence David Henry Hwang and playwright Stan Lai. The discussion is part of the Institute for Diversity in the Arts' lunchtime Visiting Artists Lecture Series.
Oskar Eustis is Artistic Director of New York's Public Theater, and Arts Professor New York University. Eustis has worked as a director, dramaturg, and artistic director for theaters around the world, including the Eureka Theatre Company in San Francisco, where he was resident director and dramaturg from 1981 through 1986 and Artistic Director until 1989, when he moved to the Mark Taper Forum as Associate Artistic Director. He has also been Associate Professor of Theater at UCLA's School of Film, Television and Theatre.
Stan Lai (IDA artist-in-residence 2006) is among the most influential playwright/directors in Asia. Lai (Chinese name Lai Sheng-chuan) is also known for his award-winning films. Lai's plays have been performed throughout the world, and he is widely regarded as one of the most important voices in contemporary Chinese-language theatre. His Taiwan theatre group Performance Workshop, of which he is Artistic Director, is a collective of some of the finest performers working in the Chinese language. Lai's The Peach Blossom Land (1986) has toured worldwide, and was made into an award-winning film (1992). His "crosstalk" (xiangsheng) series, beginning with the work That Evening, We Performed Xiangsheng (1985) has helped created a large, popular audience base for his critically acclaimed plays. His epic seven-hour A Dream Like A Dream (2000), in part developed at the University of California, Berkeley while Lai was a Regent's Lecturer in 2000, received top awards at the 2003 Drama Awards, and has drawn comparisons to Peter Brook's Mahabharata.