Field Leadership Fund: Meet Kyoung H. Park & Aya Lane

Artist Fellow, KYOUNG H. PARK was born in Santiago, Chile and is the first Korean playwright from Latin America to be produced and published in the United States. He is author of Sex and Hunger, disOriented, Walkabout Yeolha, Tala, Pillowtalk and many short plays including Mina, which is published in Seven Contemporary Plays from the Korean Diaspora in the Americas by Duke University Press. For over a decade, Kyoung has worked internationally in Brazil, Chile, England, India, and South Korea in search of contemporary theatrical models that integrate his passion for peace studies and playwriting. Kyoung writes and directs his own work as Artistic Director of Kyoung’s Pacific Beat, a peacemaking theater company.

Kyoung is currently under commission by Mixed Blood Theater Company (Minneapolis) and is a proud member of the Ma-Yi Theater Writer’s Lab and Soho Theatre’s Writer’s Hub (London). Kyoung is recipient of an Edward Albee Playwriting Fellowship, Theater of the Oppressed International Exchange Fellowship (Rio de Janeiro), Target Margin Theater’s Institute for Collaborative Theater-Making fellowship, grants from the Arvon Foundation (London), Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant, GK Foundation (Seoul), and was named a 2010 UNESCO-Aschberg Laureate (Paris).

Kyoung received his BFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU, MA in Peace and Global Governance from Kyung Hee University, and MFA in Playwriting from Columbia University, where he was a Dean’s Fellow. He lives in Brooklyn with his husband, Daniel Lim, and continues his self-education in Buddhism, following his refuge vows with His Holiness the 14^th Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India.

"...having the opportunity to work with a professional arts manager is a game-changer. I look forward to working with someone who not only understands the field, but the context, values, and community for which my work is created."

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Manager Fellow, Ayanna Lane, who goes by her given name, Aya, is a creator hailing from Atlanta, GA. As a queer woman of color from the South, her story is a unique one. She tells it through writing, pole dancing, DJing and healing. She’s a performance artist who combines these mediums mentioned above and is a dance teacher. She firmly believes in art as a way to connect to your innermost truths and using those gifts to connect to people in your community. She lives in East Harlem, owns every Outkast CD ever recorded and is obsessed with avocados.

"For me, it’s critical for me to be on the other side. I want to know how to assist other artists, whose stories are so often ignored. These stories, this work, and this art, are the building blocks to transform our society."

Learn more about the Fellows here.

Learn more about the work the paired Fellows are doing here.