Not Alone Anymore: Asian American Solo Show Festival

Four Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) solo performers - Lauren Kee, Lani Montreal, Huy Nguyen, and RJ Silva - will each present their own theatrical work across two afternoons and evenings. The weekend also includes a public workshop, How to Make a Solo Show, taught by the festival artists, and a closing party with dinner, mocktails, and a chance to meet the performers.

Dealbreaker, Lauren Kee’s one-woman show, is about herpes, heartbreak, and the death of the one-night stand. She blends storytelling with comedy to share what it’s like dating with herpes, handling disclosure, and the path to healing. Dealbreaker asks us: how do we learn to accept ourselves when it feels like no one else does?

Three Horse Men, by Huy Nguyen, is an intergenerational story that melds the perspectives of three members of a single family - across time, beyond understanding, and spanning a literal ocean. How does the life of one echo through the lives of others forwards and backwards in time? Partial narrative, sometimes poem, occasional essay, and sporadic confessional, Three Horse Men explores what it means to be lost, found, and then lost again.

You Eat So Well!, RJ Silva’s solo storytelling show, invites the audience to a meal built from his relationships with food - from charting his beginnings as a latchkey kid, moving to America mid-puberty and gay awakenings, to rediscovering a love for food, family, and his culture throughout adulthood. The show explores food as a cultural love language to Filipinos, and how RJ’s immigration story charted a complicated but ultimately fulfilling relationship with his hunger for food and community.

Anak ni Tapia: Leaving Mother, by Lani T. Montreal, embarks on a deeply personal and poignant journey through memory, identity, and reconciliation, beginning with the death of her mother, Mely Tagasa, a beloved Filipino actress and writer best known for her iconic role as “Miss Tapia” in a popular sitcom in the Philippines.

Meet the festival artists: Lauren Kee (she/hers) is a storyteller, producer, and nonprofit project manager based in Chicago. Lani T. Montreal (she/her/siya) writes to create her home in the diaspora; she is a queer feminist Filipina educator, writer, performer, and community activist based in Chicago. Huy Nguyen (he/him) is an actor/writer/director; originally from the Pacific Northwest, he studied drama at the University of Washington before now sharing his time between Chicago and Los Angeles, and believes art should be accessible to anyone with an open heart and free mind. RJ Silva (he/him) is the Artistic Director of CIRCA Pintig; born and raised in Manila, he moved to America at thirteen and is a graduate of Loyola University Chicago’s Department of Fine and Performing Arts.