"Brutal but hilarious... a woman who takes life's absurdities very seriously."
-East Bay Express

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BIO

SHORT BIO
Kristina Wong is a nationally presented solo performer, writer, actor, educator, culture jammer, and filmmaker. Described by the East Bay Express as "brutal but hilarious... a woman who takes life's absurdities very seriously," her body of performance work includes short and full-length solo performance works, outrageous street theater stunts and pranks, subversive internet installations, and plays and sketch comedy.  Her performances have been shown in spaces that include:  the Public Theater, REDCAT, Mark Taper Forum, Jumpstart Performance Company (San Antonio, TX), La MaMa ETC, the Painted Bride (Philadelphia, PA), the Comedy Central Workspace among dozens of others.   She was awarded the Creative Capital Award in Theater and a Creation Fund from the National Performance Network to create her third full-length solo show, "Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" exploring the remarkably high incidence of suicide among Asian American women in a world that's more nuts than we are. Kristina wrote and performed in the CBS Multicultural Comedy Showcase. Her show "Free?" was also featured at Comedy Central's South Beach Comedy Festival in Miami. Kristina was invited as the alumna commencement speaker for the 2008 UCLA Department of English graduation.  She is completing a novel started with the PEN USA Rosenthal Emerging Voices Fellowship. She is a freelance contributor to anthologies and magazines that include Playgirl Magazine. Her mail order bride website is www.bigbadchinesemama.com. 

LONG BIO
Kristina Wong is a nationally presented solo performer, writer, actor, educator, culture jammer, and filmmaker. The East Bay Express describes her as "Brutal but hilarious... a woman who takes life's absurdities very seriously."  Noted for her quirky, culture-jamming, and subversive tactics, Kristina takes an offbeat artistic approach to activism that upstages the strangeness of our times.   Kristina recently received the Creative Capital Grant in Theater and a Creation Fund from the National Performance Network to develop her third full-length solo show "Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"-- exploring the remarkably high incidence of depression and suicide among Asian American women in a world more nuts than we are.  The show was co-commissioned with a National Performance Network Creation Fund with La Pena Cultural Center (Berkeley) and the Asian Arts Initiative (Philadelphia).  Kristina shot a concert film version of Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest with director Mike Closson that is currently in post-production. Her first solo show, "Miss Chinatown 2nd Runner Up" was commissioned by the TeAda New Works Festival and was an LA Times "Best Bet". Her second full length show, "Free?" has toured across the country. Most recently "Free?" was the only "performance art meets stand-up comedy" offering of Miami's South Beach Comedy Festival in association with Comedy Central.

Her work has shown nationally in spaces that include the REDCAT (Los Angeles), Mark Taper Forum (Los Angeles), Comedy Central Workspace in Los Angeles, South Beach Comedy Festival (Miami, Fl), Bay Area Hip Hop Theater Festival, the NYC Hip Hop Theater Festival (at the Public Theater), LaMama ETC, Kirk Theater in New York (National Asian American Theater Festival), the Painted Bride (Philadelphia, PA), Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, The Off-Centre (Austin, TX), Jumpstart Theater Company (San Antonio, TX), Out North (Anchorage, AK) and dozens of universities around the country.

In addition to stage performance, Kristina has created a series of site-specific performance pranks and installations that reinterpret everything from Homeland Security to Asian Sororities to the Miss Chinatown Pageant. One of her first projects was Bigbadchinesemama.com, a mock mail order bride site launched as a college project in 2000 that continues to provoke Asian fetishists, porn directors, activists and klansmen.

In addition to writing her own performance work, Kristina writes feminist essays, commentary, and magazine articles.  She has been a guest contributor to Playgirl Magazine and written for anthologies like the Yell-oh! Girls Anthology (Harper Collins), the Catching a Wave Anthology (Northeastern University Press), and Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul IV.   She is currently completing work on a novel that she started with the Rosenthal PEN USA Emerging Voices Fellowship.  She also has contributed writing to various online publications.

As an actor, she has trained at the Stephen Book Acting Studios, with Craig Wallace, and at the Groundlings. Kristina was selected from thousands of actors to write and perform in the CBS Sketch Comedy Showcase. She also put together "Hooray Whoring for Hollywood!  Kristina Wong's Big Hollywood Showcase!"-- a compilation "best-of" show for the Comedy Central Workspace.  Kristina has toured in Will and Company's "American Voices," an eight character one-person show that tours to schools nationally.  She was part of the San Francisco Fringe Festival OPM cast (an LA based sketch comedy troupe) crowned "Best of the Fringe."  She has also appeared in a handful of independent film projects and national and international commercials where she has played Eskimos, Harajuku girls, milkmaids with enlarged hands, and other human oddities that sell everything from hot dogs to car insurance.

As a community activist and educator, Kristina teaches performance and writing workshops at colleges and for women, people of color and youth.  She has been awarded for four straight years with an Artist-in-Residence award from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs to facilitate "BECAUSE," a multi-generational performance and writing workshop for women of color. She is the former artistic director of the Asian American Teen Theater Company in Los Angeles, creating educational theater on teen issues like HIV/AIDS with youth. She has also worked with Khmer Girls in Action of Long Beach.  She also worked as a news reporter for KPFK public radio and has been spotted parading with the Billionaires for Bush, a satirical street theater campaign that exposes politicians support corporate interests at the expense of everyday Americans. She even "billionaired" in Washington DC during Bush's 2nd inauguration and managed to crash a black tie Republican gala event. Kristina was also selected as an American delegate by the Korea Multi-Cultural Leadership program in 2005 to dialogue with Korea's community, educational, and governmental leaders. 

As a filmmaker, Kristina produced and directed "Beat the Bus." A documentary/ reality performance where Larry, a recent college grad with a sizeable educational debt, ran a real life foot race against a Santa Monica Blue Bus. The documentary received support from Visual Communications' "Armed with a Camera" Fellowship and has screened nationally. Kristina has created shorter experimental video works that have screened locally in Los Angeles. She also experiments with video diaries, commentary, and public response on her YouTube Channel.

Kristina is one of the three subjects in "Yours Truly, Miss Chinatown"-- a documentary by Daisy Lin Shapiro that follows two Miss Chinatown contenders and one imposter (that would be Kristina!).  The NAATA/PBS funded documentary premiered at the Asian Pacific Film Festival in Los Angeles and continues to play film festivals around the country.  Kristina's work has garnered press from outlets that include NY Arts Magazine, Vogue Knitting, LA Times, the Village Voice, East Bay Express, LA Weekly, SF Examiner, PBS Bookshow, CHUM TV on Canadian Network Television, BUST Magazine, Ms. Magazine, Bitch Magazine, the International Channel, and Current TV.

In 2008, Kristina was invited by her alma mater, UCLA, to be the commencement speaker for the Department of English graduation.  Other distinctions include an award from the Center for Cultural Innovation, two Durfee ARC grants, an O'Connor Scholar Award from the Davis Putter Foundation, and a DBD scholarship from the Rachel Rosenthal Company. She has also received residencies from the Hermitage Retreat in Florida,the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and a Hothouse Residency from UCLA.

Born and raised in San Francisco, Kristina splits her time between Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York when not on tour. She drives Harold, a 1981 pink Mercedez Benz that runs on vegetable oil.  She is dreaming up a new show about living without a car in Los Angeles, after the firey demise of her pink biodiesel car.   Her cat, Oliver, and his recent rash of spraying problems is the inspiration of Cat Lady, her newest stage work that premiered as a work-in-progress in the REDCAT NOW Festival. Kristina is developing that show with a MAPFUND grant.