Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig

Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig

Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig’s play The World of Extreme Happiness, recently produced at the National Theatre in London, will have its world premiere at the Goodman Theatre and Manhattan Theatre Club in late 2014 and early 2015, in a co-production directed by Eric Ting. Her other plays have been produced by Trafalgar Studios 2 [West End], Crowded Fire, Page 73 Productions, Interact Theatre, Borderlands Theatre and the...
Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig’s play The World of Extreme Happiness, recently produced at the National Theatre in London, will have its world premiere at the Goodman Theatre and Manhattan Theatre Club in late 2014 and early 2015, in a co-production directed by Eric Ting. Her other plays have been produced by Trafalgar Studios 2 [West End], Crowded Fire, Page 73 Productions, Interact Theatre, Borderlands Theatre and the Contemporary American Theatre Festival. Awards her plays have received include the Wasserstein Prize, the Yale Drama Series Award, an Edinburgh Fringe First Award, and the Keene Prize for Literature. She is under commission from Manhattan Theatre Club, Seattle Rep, the Goodman Theatre and the National Theatre. Frances received an MFA in Writing from the James A. Michener Center for Writers at UT Austin, a BA in Sociology from Brown University, and a certificate in Ensemble-Based Physical Theatre from the Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre. Her work has been published by Yale University Press, Glimmer Train, Methuen Drama, Samuel French and Dramatists Play Service. Frances was born in Philadelphia, and raised in Northern Virginia, Okinawa, Taipei and Beijing. She is a Tow Foundation Playwright-in-Residence at Manhattan Theatre Club.

Plays

  • The World of Extreme Happiness
    When Sunny is born in a rural vilage on the Yangtze River, her parents dump her in a slop bucket and leave her to die because she isn't a boy. Sunny survives, and at 14 leaves home for a Shenzhen factory to fund her brother's education. There she works grueling shifts cleaning toilets and dreams of promotion. Desperate to maximize her only capital--her youth--Sunny attends self-help classes and learns...
    When Sunny is born in a rural vilage on the Yangtze River, her parents dump her in a slop bucket and leave her to die because she isn't a boy. Sunny survives, and at 14 leaves home for a Shenzhen factory to fund her brother's education. There she works grueling shifts cleaning toilets and dreams of promotion. Desperate to maximize her only capital--her youth--Sunny attends self-help classes and learns ways to improve her chances at securing a coveted office position. But when her dogged attempts to pull herself out of poverty hurt a fellow worker, Sunny begins to question the design of a system she has spent her life trying to master, and starts to fight for an alternative.
  • Lidless
    A former Guantanamo detainee dying of liver disease journeys to the home of his female interrogator fifteen years after their time together to demand half her liver for the damage she wreaked on his body and soul during her interrogations.
  • 410[GONE]
    A sister journeys to the Chinese Land of the Dead in search of her missing brother, encountering a frenetic landscape where the Goddess of Mercy and the Monkey King reign, and Dance Dance Revolution holds the key to Transmigration.