Preston Choi

Preston Choi

Preston Choi is a Chicago based playwright whose work focuses on Asian-American history, mixed race experience, and social science fiction. His plays include A Great Migration or The Migratory Patterns of the North American Monarch Butterfly and Fatherless Sons (2017 Agnes Nixon Award; 2018 Playwrights Realm Scratchpad Series finalist), This Is Not A True Story (CAATA ConFest 2018; 2019 Bay Area Playwright...
Preston Choi is a Chicago based playwright whose work focuses on Asian-American history, mixed race experience, and social science fiction. His plays include A Great Migration or The Migratory Patterns of the North American Monarch Butterfly and Fatherless Sons (2017 Agnes Nixon Award; 2018 Playwrights Realm Scratchpad Series finalist), This Is Not A True Story (CAATA ConFest 2018; 2019 Bay Area Playwright's Festival finalist), Happy Birthday Mars Rover (The Passage Theatre; 2018 G45 Lightbulb Reading Series), You Will Get Used To It (2019 Playwrights Realm Scratchpad Series finalist), and Advice To Chicago Residents on Lead in Drinking Water (2019 City Lit Art of Adaptation Festival). His plays have been developed with Silk Road Rising, A Squared, Theatre Mu, Artists at Play, CAATA, The Passage Theatre, G45 Productions, The Forum, AATAB, Chicago Scratch, Victory Gardens College Night, Our Perspective, Wave Productions, and Vertigo Productions. He graduated from Northwestern University in 2018 with a BS in Theatre which feels appropriate.

Plays

  • A Great Migration or The Migratory Patterns of the North American Monarch Butterfly and Fatherless Sons by Preston Choi
    Cast: 
    5
    ·
    Genre: comedy, docudrama/historic + 1 more
    ·
    Keyword: interracial, Asian American + 4 more
    Genre: comedy, docudrama/historic, drama
    Keyword: interracial, Asian American, single mother, science, TED Talk, motherhood
    As Louise prepares for a TEDx Talk on the Migratory Patterns of the North American Monarch Butterfly, her three sons are on the hunt to find their father to avoid getting drafted into the Korean army. Part nature documentary, part TED Talk, A Great Migration maps one family's search for identity, unity, and a destination they are reluctant to embrace.
  • This Is Not A True Story by Preston Choi
    Cast: 
    3
    ·
    Genre: adaptation, dark comedy + 6 more
    ·
    Keyword: Orientalism, metatheatrical + 2 more
    Genre: adaptation, dark comedy, docudrama/historic, drama, experimental, mystery/thriller, satire, tragedy
    Keyword: Orientalism, metatheatrical, suicide, asian
    The heroine of Madame Butterfly completes her tragic suicide, only to wake up trapped in a never ending loop of her story. Then Miss Saigon is born thrusting another heroine into the deadly cycle, until a mysterious office woman throws the world out of balance. This Is Not A True Story unravels the history of Orientalist art, theatre, and the danger of fiction becoming reality.
  • Happy Birthday Mars Rover by Preston Choi
    Cast: 
    6
    ·
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 2 more
    ·
    Keyword: Mars, earth and space + 3 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, docudrama/historic, science fiction
    Keyword: Mars, earth and space, environment, nature, science
    The Mars Rover sings Happy Birthday to itself as it searches for life on Mars as humans back on Earth search to understand what life is. A medley of snapshots, from cave people naming abstract concepts, bubbles that scream when popped, housewives battling existential dread, cows trying to get to heaven, and the last human on Earth collecting jars of hair. Happy Birthday Mars Rover is a darkly comedic and...
    The Mars Rover sings Happy Birthday to itself as it searches for life on Mars as humans back on Earth search to understand what life is. A medley of snapshots, from cave people naming abstract concepts, bubbles that scream when popped, housewives battling existential dread, cows trying to get to heaven, and the last human on Earth collecting jars of hair. Happy Birthday Mars Rover is a darkly comedic and whimsically morbid attempt to understand the human condition and life itself.
  • You Will Get Used To It by Preston Choi
    Cast: 
    6
    ·
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy + 5 more
    ·
    Keyword: dark comedy, office comedy + 2 more
    Genre: comedy, dark comedy, drama, horror, mystery/thriller, satire, tragedy
    Keyword: dark comedy, office comedy, kafkaesque, ensemble cast
    On the ninth floor of a nondescript building there's a gaping hole in the wall oozing a dark liquid, with what sounds like crying coming from deep inside. But it's not your job to pay attention to that, that's Pat's job. A Kafkaesque dark office comedy on the bureaucracy, inevitability, and mental fatigue of suffering.
  • THE PARENT TEACHER MEETING REGARDING THE STATUS OF BANNED AND/OR CENSORED PICTURE BOOKS IN THE FIRST GRADE LIBRARY or A Person's A Person by Preston Choi
    Cast: 
    2
    ·
    Genre: comedy, docudrama/historic + 2 more
    ·
    Keyword: Asian American, elementary school + 2 more
    Genre: comedy, docudrama/historic, drama, political
    Keyword: Asian American, elementary school, drama, historic subject
    A Japanese American mother quietly storms into an elementary school library demanding to know why her daughter is reading a racist author's work, while a progressive librarian struggles to uphold the school's values. Tense pleasant conversation unfolds into a physical debate over censorship, war crimes, apologies (accepted or unaccepted), and the fraught past of Dr. Seuss.