Artists' Fellowship - 1989
Playwriting/Screenwriting
Artist Statement:
Receiving the NYFA grant gave me a much-needed infusion of cash and confidence, and enabled me to complete the play, "Rosa Loses Her Face," for which I won the grant. I've had three readings and have a possible production this fall (1990). I now think of myself more as a "real playwright" than an occasional "writer of plays." My attitude is more professional and serious.
More about the Artist:
Ms. Chen is an autodidact and the recipient of playwriting fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts (twice), Emerging Playwrights Award (Urban Stages), among others. She is a member of Dramatists Guild, Women's Project, and the three actors' unions. Plays include Eating Chicken Feet, a comedy about divorce, abandonment, and the abasement of Chinese women, for which she won an NEA. It was produced off-Broadway jointly by Women's Project and Pan Asian, and later by Kumu Kahua Theatre, Honolulu; a Humana Festival finalist and published by Dramatic Publishing Co. I See My Bones, about aging and hope, was developed at Playwrights Theatre of NJ, Madison, and produced by Urban Stages. Blessings of Chairman Moo (work in progress), a dark comedy about embalmment and totalitarianism, for which she received a second NYFA, read at Ma-yi/ Vineyard (twice), Women's Project, The Flea. She won her first NYFA for Rosa Loses Her Face, produced by Luna Stage, Montclair, NJ. Her short play Rowing to America has been published in two anthologies. Body Parts Trilogy: 3 Short Metaphoricopsychoanatomical Plays have been individually produced or read in many venues. Born in Shanghai and raised near Philadelphia, she came to New York City after receiving a BA in math from Brown University. She was a scholarship student at Martha Graham School and later a professional actress for many years before becoming a playwright. She is also reader/panelist for the NEA, NYFA, NYSCA, NJCA, and Bronx Arts Council.
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