Hey, so aside from the fact that I paid $400 to the mechanic today to fix some leaks in my transmission....and spent the day going up and down LA by bus (man, do I hand it to the carless in LA, it's not easy!)... I have more winnings to report!

Ok, so remember that pad commercial contest I entered for Lunapads. Let me refresh your memory...




Well... I didn't win first place. Which is fine because the woman who did win put a lot more work into her commercial than I did. And who the heck needs $250 in re-washable pads anyway?

But they did give everyone else who entered $100 in lunapad product!

Hell yes! Shopping spree! Get down with my rewashable pad self!

(And who says the Wongster can't party?)

And so much fun considering it's my "Buy Nothing Year."

Now, I'm not sure what the heck to do with all these new re-washable pads. I have plenty as is to hold me over until menopause. I don't need more. I'm not sure I know any woman who would want to get these as a gift because every time I tell another woman I use cloth pads, I get this response: "Bitch. You crazy."

But they have all sorts of balms and undies. And I was actually looking at these cloth hankies. I thought that might be something to get and use instead of paper towels and disposable dinner napkins. It would cut down in the long run on a lot of waste. They also have these "Divacup" things that I'm totally scared of. They are like cups you stick in your jojo to catch your period. Yikes. But they are better than tampons supposedly.

Not ready to try out the sea sponges though. Ew.

Aren't you glad you read my blog today?

Labels: buy nothing day year, commercial contest, divacup, lunapads, winnings

my show tonight was amazing. it was way past sold out. So many friends and new friends in the audience. the audience was with me the whole time and i improvised all sorts of crazy shit with them. at curtain call, they all stood and it was amazing to take in.

i was so tired after i could barely stand. In fact, i sat. i sat in the lobby shaking hands, drinking tea, and thought to myself, "Oh my god. I'm Kristina Wong, and I just did a solo show. and it went really well. all these people came to see me."

and the craziest thing of all, my childhood hero julie brown (of "earth girls are easy") came down to see the show. we just met a couple weeks ago at this creative capital event. It was cool to talk to her after about her creepy q&a experiences. we bonded.

the whole night was unreal. and now i still can't sleep.

i can't believe it. i did it. i did a solo show on the most impossible thing to do a solo show on. and i did a damn good job.

i stumbled to my car. drove home. changed into my pjs. and for the last two hours had been lying in bed with my eyes wide open. thinking the same thing over and over again, "oh my god. i'm kristina wong."

now i am on my couch with my cat typing this.

i really wish i could go to sleep. but i can't. i'm so tired. i can't sleep.

oh my god, i'm kristina wong.

how weird to go from being and working alone, to with a crowd going nuts for you, then alone again shocked at it all.


i'm going to look at pictures of crochet now. maybe that will help me sleep.

Labels: i'm kristina wong, oh my god

The show went really well yesterday despite me feeling totally off the whole time. I got some standing O's and felt like I didn't deserve it (what's new) because my energy seemed uneven.

It was so nice to sell out (the theater, not in life, mind you) on a Friday night and see who all slapped down 20 greens to see me strut my stuff. Thank you all.

And now I sit around the house doing nothing as I recharge for tonight's show.

I thought I'd share another DIY project with you....

Kristina's Bathmat de Ex-Partners

So, as I was on the plane back home from my crazy tour schedule, I made a list of things to do while I was home for six weeks. One of these things included...

"Crochet a bathmat for bathroom."

Am I a party animal or what?!

So a few weeks ago, I was looking for clothes I wasn't going to wear again and decided to crochet a bathmat out of old clothes and boxers (clean) left behind by past partners. I also crocheted some of my unmentionables (clean) into the mix.

I cut them into strips and started to crochet in a square. Talk about a ritual of turning the past into something utilitarian.

What a perfect way to step on the past every time I come clean out of the shower.



Don't hate me for my waste not want not ways.

Labels: artist life, buy nothing year, crochet diy

I apologize to Alicia and others who were only trying to help by sending me the CNN article only for me to lash out at them like an underslept feral cat.


So you know, doing this show in particular makes me real edgy. This doesn't give me the right to be a bitch, but so you know, it's a really emotional time for me and a real emotional process. And it would be great if my friends, families, and audience would understand that I need a lot of space to meditate in weeks like these.

I am working on loving what is so that I don't lash out at the innocent anymore.

What drives me nuts, but what I'm working on loving.

1. When people ask me to tape off seats for them for the show or anything else that the box office should deal with. This is especially annoying the day of the show. And even more annoying, the hours until the show.

2. When people I don't know or who have never come to my shows ask me to email them a magic list of "magical grants" to fund their solo shows. Again, perhaps you should read a blog entry from several years ago about how hard I have worked to be a working artist. This is always annoying because it's a lot of work for me to produce such a list, and something I should be paid to do, and I don't have such a list offhand.

3. When people call me on my cell phone ten minutes before the show to tell me that they could not make the show, are lost on the way to the show and need directions, or will be late and can I save them a seat.

4. When people ask me to change the content of the show the day of the show. Or in general ask me to add "characters" to the show.

5. When people tell me after a show that they understand "Chinese culture" so much better because of my show. My show? Really? Oh boy. That's scary.


I won't be such a bitch next week. Promise.


I'm going to pretend to relax now.

Labels: kristina is so bitchy this week

I was so cranky yesterday. You probably could tell from my blog. And I had been forwarded the CNN article on APA depression like twenty times yesterday even though I was telling the universe to stop sending me more stuff to drive me nuts this week. (But like "the Secret" says, when you tell the world what you DON'T WANT...you just get more of it.)

So I did what any busy neurotic cat lady would do who should be working on her show and freaking out that both will have big and full audiences.

I finally plugged in my sewing machine from Craigslist and started to make clothes.

As some of you know, I am in the middle of my own personal "Buy Nothing Year." The things I'm not buying are new clothes or gifts. I'm also trying to cut down on buying other unnecessary crap. Everything has to be made, gifted, traded, etc. No cash. The reason is not just to save money, but to be more creative with what I got and reduce what I consume.

So I made this skirt last night. Unfortunately my sewing machine only sews in reverse, so I was not able to do very clean stitching.


From Shirt to Skirt-- Welcome to Kristina's World of Procrastination!

First I started with this old polyester shirt, that was too big. My friend Nadia gave it to me because she couldn't sell it at her yard sale. It's still cute as a shirt, but not form fitting and just cut weird for my body.




Then, I removed the sleeves.




Then, I cut off the collar.




I sewed in a waist and sewed the sides in for my hips. Turned the buttons so they faced the back of the skirt.




Viola! a skirt!




I reused the button hole and button from the shirt sleeve to make this tab to keep the waist tight.




Yay! new skirt!



I'm going to wear this after my show this weekend! See you then!

Labels: buy nothing year, clothing reconstruction, crafty

So I came back from yoga class. I was hoping it would relax me. I haven't been to yoga in months. I couldn't keep track of my downward dogs, my serpents, warriors, whatever.

The teacher had to adjust me all throughout class because I was a hot mess.

I started laughing when she was hovering over me saying, "Relax your face!!!"

I'm going to get a haircut soon.

I just got off the phone with Pearl J Park, a filmmaker in NYC who is doing a documentary on depression among APAs. She was interested in shooting the show in NY for her doc. I found myself getting into the old familiar rant that I've been getting into lately about how much I hate Q&As, how I resent being a "spokesperson" for all things traumatic and suicidal, how I resent being the "go-to" girl when you need to talk to someone "authentically mentally ill".

Poor woman had to listen to me ranting about this. Poor me had to rant.

Also my dear readers, I don't know if you are listening out there, but here I go again, screaming into the sky. I really appreciate your support, but please know I am DONE with adding new parts of the show. I don't need to talk to any more depressed people. I don't need to read any more articles. And I don't need to be forwarded anything anymore. I appreciate you volunteering information to me. But I'm DONE.

PLEASE STOP SENDING ME ARTICLES, RECOMMENDATION ON DEPRESSED PEOPLE TO TALK TO, AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR NEW SECTIONS ON THE SHOW.

AND NO. I'M NOT GOING TO DO A SHOW ABOUT ASIAN MEN AND DEPRESSION.

LEAVE ME ALONE!!!!

One thing Pearl said on the phone is how important it is to protect our vision as artists and to protect ourselves. I look back at the last year of putting this show together and feel like the community has metaphorically raped me. I know... this is an extreme thing to say. But I feel like very few people in their interest in their show actually cared about what my artistic vision was, and instead have pushed their agenda on me to enact. I especially felt raped by my audience during my Q&As in the Bay Area. There I was up onstage, letting myself be vulnerable and miscontextualized. Being asked to expose my most private parts. And unable to say no or stop it. It was horrible.

I don't ever want that to happen again.

I was asked once to be on a radio show where the topic would be depression and suicide among APAs. I said I was happy to come on and talk about my show and the tricky process of trying to make it. But they wanted me to come on as an "authentically suicidal woman" and talk about my non-existent "experiences of being suicidal." NO THANKS! I'm not going to even begin to tell you how annoying and wrong that was.

Nurit, my director said, "You know, you get those questions, because you invite people to invade you like that. If you don't want that to happen, then don't do the Q&A."

Leilani suggested that we put cards in the program and feedback can be written in those cards instead of asked during the Q&A.

I really feel it time to put my foot down. So from here on out. No more Q&As. We are scrapping the Q&A in LA. There's no reason for them. I get nothing from them but grief. I'm totally incoherent during them. I'll do them at schools, if they want them to be done and if there are enough moderators present. But no more fielding questions from people that serve no purpose but to agitate me.

***

And now... onto other less agitated news.


The folks at Lunapads found my blog and invited me especially to enter their commercial contest. I put this together in an hour.



I think I got a good shot of winning since there were only 6 entries.

I will win more cloth pads if I am picked. Yay.



My friend Alex in London did a response video. Ironically, his has more views than mine.


Now I have to go meditate because I'm agitated.

Labels: art talk, artist life., lunapads, moon, vision

Not more than ten minutes after feeling empowered for my last post, I get a rejection letter for a fellowship I just applied to.

Boo.....

This week I'm working largely towards my show this Friday and Saturday! I'm excited because the reservation lists are more than half full which means the shows should be packed to full capacity! What a great homecoming show it will be! Nurit, my director for the show here, has really helped me find some new stuff for in the show that I had not found before and it's keeping the show fresh and alive for me.

There's so much to do by the end of this month. As soon as the show closes I will be slammed with work towards my 4 show NYC run. I still need to find a place to stay in NYC all of June. I have to do my press and outreach for that show too.

Here's the info on the show. Please come!



May 18-19, 8pm
Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in Los Angeles!
2100 Square Feet Theater
5615 San Vicente Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90019
Tickets: $20
Group Tickets (10 or more) $15
Reservations: 310-998-8765

****

I was at Vince's last night scanning pictures. It's so much fun at his place because he has cable AND Tivo. Neither of which I have myself. I can only hand one remote control. I always break his TV when I try to turn it on. I watched To Catch a Predator. I think next to Charm School, it's my favorite show ever. I was jumping up and down everytime the cops took down a pedophile and screaming at the TV.

"Perverted Justice Biatch!!!"

****
Now onto me talking about stuff I'm learning as an artist....



So I was talking to Daisy yesterday, a documentary filmmaker who has followed my work for the last few years, about how much resentment and trauma I still have from the post show Q&A discussions after my first Bay Area shows in December. And Q&As seem to continue to leave a weird taste in my mouth.

Daisy was there at my show in San Jose and said, "I just wanted to hug you after your show in San Jose."

I needed it, I was a mess.

I feel it time to come out and say it.

I really felt abused during the Q&As in my Bay Area shows and am in the process of healing from them. I think because the shows all ran 2 hours long and I was exhausted. I really felt a lot of the audience questions were inappropriately invasive.

For my last show Free? I felt questions were really inappropriately invasive, but something about this particular show has really invited a lot of questions that I think are downright mean.

There's nothing worse than the feeling of doing a very emotionally exhausting 2 hour show only to get a barrage of questions from the audience that seem to not acknowledge the hard work I just did.

I guess what was so upsetting about the Bay Area Q&As was that:

1. People would start asking me very personal questions that I felt were irrelevant to the show and were very invasive questions that you shouldn't even ask of a friend. I felt that people could not separate me from the persona I portrayed on stage. While the two are closely linked, I don't think they are the same person. Ironically, one of these questions came from one of my family members during the first show Q&A ("So were you really in therapy?").

What did any of these questions have to do with the show? Is this all you got out of the two hours I spent with you? License to invade my personal life?! It was very hard to say, "I don't want to answer that." Because that would have sounded just as guilty as trying to answer it. And a lot of these loaded questions would really take hours to answer honestly.

2. People asking questions of me like I am the spokeswoman and scientific expert of mental illness. These were the questions I am not equipped to answer. I also don't like being put in the position of offering cut and dried answers like some kind of "cultural expert."

"So why is this suicide thing happening?"
"Where is the pressure on Asian Americans coming from?"
"What do you think we can do to stop this?"
"In your research, what were the numbers of Chinese women to other races?"

I so badly wanted to scream out: "I DON'T KNOW!! DON'T YOU THINK IF I HAD THE MAGIC ANSWER, I WOULD HAVE TOLD YOU IN THE 2 HOUR SHOW?!"

3. People who were experiencing or recovering from depression or psychological trauma feeling it necessary to "unload" onto me after a show when I felt it had been made clear during and after the show that I was not the best person to share such information with and I was visibly exhausted after.

Maybe what I'm struggling with is how to be the listener. Or the fact that by default, this show makes me the listener, and I just have to step up and be that person. I'd rather a person unload on me, than kill themselves, but I've not been in much shape lately, especially after a long show, to hear these stories. That, and I'm emotionally exhausted by stories of depression to take any more on. I am always moved when people feel close enough to me to share things they've not told anyone else but I wish people would understand, it's really hard on me.

Especially after the shows in the Bay Area, I was so emotionally bankrupt, to have to listen to more stories as some kind of healer, was too much for me.

I guess I could take this as a testament to the show's success. That it brings people to dialogue. I just wish that it didn't feel like pressure on me to be some kind of savior.

4. To have worked for over a year on the show, poured my blood and sweat into it, to have obsessed over the tiniest details... only to hear that the audience's most burning concern is: "So, how do you make money?"

I want so badly to ask back: "And do you want to see my tax returns too?! Was the show that bad and that unmoving that all you care about is how I could possibly make a living by making crappy shows?"





I acknowledge by taking on this topic as a show and by having a public persona that seems (to some) to be very gregarious and personable, that I've invited some of these questions to come up, but it's really painful for me.

And it's making me resent my audience. Not good.

I feel like I really set out to address impossible questions about depression and suicide as exactly that... impossible. But they keep flooding forward anyway.



Daisy's suggestion is that I scrap the Q&As altogether. I like that idea. But I also feel left in the dark when everybody just goes home after. I'd like some structured contact with them to know what they thought. I guess what bothers me is when I hear some of the questions, I feel like I disappointed them.


Since those Q&A s in the Bay Area I've made adjustments to the post-show that make me feel more comfortable and emotionally protected. I am sharing these adjustments on my blog for other artists who read my blog who also do Q&As. I hear artists often say that they never feel satisfied with how their Q&As have gone. So maybe this will help us all.

Changes I've been adapting....

1. I change out of my costume and wash my face for the Q&A. Changing out of costumes gives the audience a way to distinguish me from the "persona" (also named "Kristina Wong") that I play in the show and understand that the questions they are asking me are directed towards me as the artist and creator. And that there is a difference between the "Kristina Wong" that they watched for an hour and the one who created the show.

I also ask for a chair and some water. In San Jose, I could barely stand and started to cry because I was so exhausted, and the parade of invasive and strange questions made it even worse. They did ask me if I needed a break, but I refused it because I felt guilty about making the audience wait longer. This was a mistake to cave into my guilt. I should have asked them for this break. I should have also requested after my show in Berkeley to not be filmed for an interview on my experience working with the theater as I could barely stand upright and was in no place to talk longer.


2. I now ask that the Q&A session to be moderated by someone who is familiar with me or the show, or at least, by a person who is prefaced beforehand on how to guide the tone of the questions. I ask that they kick off the session with a question focused around the development and craft of the piece and not my personal life or personal finances or anything that is irrelevant. I ask the moderator to kick the Q&A off as a discussion. I also ask that we set a time limit for the Q&A.

What I'm going to start doing, that I have not done before is to ask the moderator to step in when there is an invasive question and ask the questioner to reframe their question around the development of the show.

3. Engaging practitioners from the mental health field to be present at Q&A sessions. If there are questions that require knowledge of statistics or psychological science, those should be directed towards these practitioners. I'm not equipped to answer these questions and should not be answering them.


Things I am still learning:

1. How to refuse to answer questions that I do not care to answer or do not have the body of knowledge to answer without creating an awkward or confrontational moment.

2. How to not be so defensive about my artistic vision. And to be ok with the fact that every audience member will never step away with the show I intended for them to see. That every audience members' individual experience will inform their take on the show and it will never be exactly what I intended.

3. How to acknowledge in a non-snobby way that "Dammit! I'm an artist, not a scientist! Not an anthropologist! Not a spokeswoman!" when I am asked questions that imply that I am those things.

4. How to maintain control over the Q&A session. How to let the moderator know when I am tired and out of brain space and that it should end. How to let the moderator know when the tone of the Q&A is making me uncomfortable. How to let the questioner know when I am deeply offended by their question (rather than try to awkwardly answer it or smiling politely) without attacking them or making the entire audience uncomfortable.

5. How to explain my experience of past, traumatizing Q&A sessions to set context for the development of this show and create a healthy dialogue about the personal, political, and artistic creation from the seemingly autobiographical. How to use this experience to create a healthy dialogue about boundaries and respect of the artist and her personal space.

6. How to use this experience and process of learning to take into the future of my work.


BLAH BLAH BLAH. It's a process. And I'm learning.


****

So, Helena was telling me that when she started her job, she didn't get much work to do so all she did was read my blog from beginning to end.

So in case Helena ever has a week again like that at work, or anyone else who is bored enough to read my blog. I present you with material to read to fill your lonely hours.

I've posted some press as PDFs online. Vince helped me turn these into PDFs because I am so tech illiterate when it comes to making PDFs. I think between all of these articles, and reading my blog, you still don't get to know the real Wong. But you come semi-close.

The VOGUE Knitting Article

Yarn Market News

Philly City Metro

Philly City Paper

SF Bay Guardian

NY Arts Magazine

Thirteen Minutes

Loudmouth (this is a couple years old)




Anyway, enough bitching and horn tooting. Time to get back to work.

Labels: press

To catch a predator preteen decoy auditions. This has to be fake. But it's so funny.

Labels: to catch a predator

It's been a minute and kind of yucky to look at the blog and see the last event that marks me is the whole CSUN thing. Onto other topics...

I just did a show in Santa Cruz on Monday and am getting ready for my show in LA that happens NEXT WEEK! Man does the time fly. I'm sad I'm missing the Visual Communications Film Fest this year because I'm pretty much in rehearsals or was doing shows the whole time. I never miss that festival.

Always good to work and be busy though.

So far the reservation list looks pretty good as both shows are almost half reserved! There are only 132 seats. Sad that I'll only be doing two shows...

I was on KPFK Radio this morning with Riku and I was saying, "I told myself the last two years that I was working on this show: Why am I doing this? This is so intense! This was such a stupid topic to explore on my own. Why am I still doing this?"

Riku asked, "Yeah? Why did you keep working on it?"

I really didn't have a clear answer for him. But I thought about it the whole drive home. Why did I make myself so nuts? I think it's because I'm stubborn. Because I had told people I was doing this show and you can't back off once you make stuff public. (Well, actually you can. And many people do. But I'm stubborn as hell when it comes down to it and unfinished projects breed mega guilt in me.) That and it seemed like there was a lot of pressure to do this show. And I already committed to show dates before the show was writ.

So far that's the best answer I've come up with.

Labels: artist life.