On April 5th, at South Coast Rep in Costa Mesa, California, OHIO MFA playwriting alum Qui Nguyen — a pioneer of “geek theatre” — will open his new play Poor Yella Rednecks. The play is a sequel to his highly lauded Vietgone, and commissioned by SCR and Manhattan Theatre Club.
Qui is a co-founder of the Obie Award-winning Vampire Cowboys Theatre Company, known as the first and only professional theatre company to be sponsored by New York Comic Con.
Poor Yella Rednecks is the sequel to Nguyen’s Vietgone, which premiered at South Coast Rep in 2015. Rednecks begins previews Saturday and opens a week later. The plays, co-commissioned by SCR and Manhattan Theatre Club, follow the love story of Nguyen’s mother and father, Tong and Quang, who met in the Fort Chaffee refugee camp in Arkansas after they escaped Vietnam during the fall of Saigon. Poor Yella Rednecks, which Nguyen lovingly nicknamed Vietgone 2, zeroes in on the challenges the couple face as blue-collar immigrants, recently married and starting a family. (L.A. Times, March 28, 2019)
Qui writes for TV and film, in addition to continuing to be one of the most sought after playwrights in the country:
“I started in TV, then I went to Marvel, and then I went back to TV for a while and did AMC and Netflix, and now I’m back in film for Disney,” he says. “I feel like I’m late to the game, so I’m hungry to succeed.” (L.A. Times, March 28, 2019)
Writing for likes of Marvel and Disney hasn’t slowed his pace as a playwright: major theaters such as Center Theatre Group in L.A., Goodman Theatre in Chicago, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and Atlantic Theater Company and Playwrights Horizons in New York continue to commission him.
For more about Qui’s climb to national recognition:
- New York Times profile of Qui in 2016
- NBC News on Vietgone in 2017
- L.A. Times review of Vietgone at South Coast Rep in 2015
And more about his latest play, Poor Yella Rednecks, opening next week:
What is “Geek Theatre”?
Skye Robinson Hillis
Congrats to alum Cristina Luzárraga (MFA ’18) ! Her play 
Celise Kalke joined the staff of the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta in 2005 where, Director of New Projects, she manages New Play Development, the Alliance/Kendeda Graduate Playwright
Nambi Kelley has performed on regional stages across the country, internationally, including many shows at the Goodman Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre, and has been seen on several television shows, including Elementary, Person of Interest, Madam Secretary, Chicago PD, and will be guest starring on NBC’s Chicago Justice airing this spring. Also an accomplished playwright, Nambi has penned plays for Steppenwolf and Goodman Theatre in Chicago, Lincoln Center in New York, and internationally. Kelley is currently playwright in residence at the National Black Theatre in New York and is working on an adaptation of Toni Morrison’s Jazz to be produced at Baltimore’s Center Stage in May 2017. Her Native Son and short play Dead of Night: The Execution Of (commissioned by The New Black Fest) were both recently published by Sam French and are both slated for several productions across the country next season. 
Michael Legg is the Director of the Professional Training Company. Legg is in his tenth season at Actors Theatre of Louisville, where he’s directed world premieres of plays by A. Rey Pamatmat, Laura Jacqmin, Dan Dietz, Kyle John Schmidt, Marco Ramirez, Carmen Herlihy, Jennifer Haley, and Allison Moore, among others. Legg serves as a guest artist at several universities, including the the University of Idaho, Ohio University, and Texas Tech University. He also teaches for and works extensively with the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival and serves as the Artistic Director of the WildWind Performance Lab in Texas, where he’s developed new plays by Brian Quijada, Eva Suter, Brian Bauman, Martyna Majok, Basil Kreimendahl, and Joshua Conkel, among others. Legg holds an M.F.A. in acting from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and is a proud member of the Actors Equity Association.
MFA alum Chantal Bilodeau is writing and curating a series for Howlround.com — an online journal focused on exploring where we are headed and what we are doing as dramatists — about Theater and climate change. Chantal has been leading the charge internationally in developing a new play cycle about climate change. See the Howlround essay series here: 
OHIO 