{"id":15261,"date":"2022-05-23T13:24:08","date_gmt":"2022-05-23T17:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=15261"},"modified":"2022-05-23T13:24:11","modified_gmt":"2022-05-23T17:24:11","slug":"episode-487-alvin-eng","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-487-alvin-eng","title":{"rendered":"Episode 487 – Alvin Eng"},"content":{"rendered":"

Virtual Memories Show 487:
\nAlvin Eng<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/traffic.libsyn.com\/secure\/virtualmemories\/Episode_487_-_Alvin_Eng.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div>

Podcast: Play in new window<\/a> | Download<\/a><\/p>

Subscribe: Spotify<\/a> | TuneIn<\/a> | RSS<\/a> | More<\/a><\/p>\n

“With so much of life, you need to be prepared out the wazoo, but once you’re in the moment, you have to improvise.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>Playwright, performer and acoustic punk raconteur Alvin Eng<\/a> joins the show to celebrate his new memoir, Our Laundry, Our Town: My Chinese American Life from Flushing to the Downtown Stage and Beyond<\/a> (Fordham University Press). We get into his Chinese-American upbringing in the 1960s\/70s, his evolution into musical theater and the education of ’70s rock shows, the heyday of NYC performance art, his exploration of his Chinese heritage and the sensation of being Other in America & China, writing for the page vs. the stage, his Portrait Plays<\/a> and how they interrogate other art forms and artists, the solitude of creation & collaboration of performance, and how writing this memoir was sort of like making album. We also talk about his midlife crisis rock bad, How the song Chinese Rocks rocked his punk world, what he had to learn in order to teach playwriting, what it means to be Chinese-American today, how he grew more comfortable with words than music, and more. Give it a listen!<\/a> And go read Our Laundry, Our Town<\/a>!<\/p>\n

“It’s important to remember that, yes, your moment is vital, but there’s so much that happened before.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n