🏆2023:VINDICATED🏆

You would brag too if you looked back on your life with all its poverty, self-doubt and haters and could FINALLY say I DID THAT SHIT. The world is a complete mess, but you don’t come to my website to read the world headlines, you come to watch me pat myself on the back.

Here are my highlights of 2023:

1.Tours in London and all over the US.

I can barely count all the states I’ve been in this year— Maine, NY, Indiana,Michigan, PA, AZ, CT, WI, AZ, NV... and prob a few more in there. I somehow spent a week in London! There was one trip where I ran out of clean underwear, had no time to do laundry and bought new “walk of shame” panties at CVS. I was living on the road. Somehow my cat is still alive and so am I.

2. Got married to Jeremy Lin (according to AI journalism).

In what has been the greatest outcome from the strangest performance art piece of my life, I am married to Jeremy Lin and according to very reputable journalistic sources, we live in a mansion together.

3. I won half a million dollars.

Pre-tax, paid out over several years. Last year I got that mysterious phone call that every artist dreams of. A secret jury of my peers had picked me to receive the Doris Duke Artist Award. I am forever grateful. This is the kind of gift that changes everything about how I can dream forward as an artist and show up so much better for all the communities I work with.

4. I did a killer LA homecoming run of "Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord”.

It really felt like I brought the show home this Spring. Los Angeles is where I spent all of lockdown and where I built a virtual factory of Aunties. So to see them in person, in the theater, meant so much. A standing O every night! And seeing people who got me through that time— old and new friends.

5. Signed with CAA, like officially.

I was actually working with CAA as of last year but signed some actual binding paperwork. And Deadline ran a story on it!

6. I was a juror for the Pulitzer Prizes.

I read EVERY SINGLE PLAY that was entered. And this was no joke to take on reading so many plays considering I was so over scheduled in the months leading up to this. But the deliberations and discussions about the plays submitted were so cool. It was like being part of some sort of ultimate book club in which we define the future of American theater.

7. I got a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Yeah dawg. I got one of the big ones. This was definitely something I wasn’t sure if I’d ever see in my lifetime but here it is. I worked crazy hard on this application while I was doing my tour in Portland last year and it paid off.

8. Filmed some stuff.

Here I am on the set of Eric Rudnick’s film “Hold You So Tight”. I also filmed some other stuff, was a guest on some podcasts, blah blah blah.

9. Received the UCLA Community Service Award.

This was a fun one! I got to have an “I showed you!” in my speech.

10. Gave the commencement speech at UCLA.

This wasn’t my first commencement speech at my alma mater, but it was my first time being asked to address an entire school which included my former Department of World Arts and Cultures!

11. Got a book deal for a kids’ book!

The four producer team of Radical Cram School (myself, Teddy Chao, Anna Michelle Wang and Jenessa Joffe) spent a lot of time this year working on a FINALLY SUBMITTED DRAFT of Auntie Kristina’s Guide to Asian American Activism. Beaming Books will publish us in Spring 2025! The same time I am premiering my new show at ASU. It’s going to be a busy time!

12. Produced a sewing workshop on the Navajo Nation.

I feel so incredibly blessed that what came out of that horrible pandemic were meaningful relationships with mutual aid organizers on the Navajo Nation. As part of my new show on food justice, I had grand plans to work with a local gas station market in a very rural area of the reservation to create an immersive sewing project, but unfortunately, the market had to close because of weather damage. So we pivoted to this ribbon skirt sewing workshop. It was a pretty intense week. Five workshops in six days in three Navajo communities. I worked with Auntie Badly Licked Bear to drive a lot of donated sewing supplies out there. Used my grants to pay local Navajo teachers to show everyone how to sew. We have left this community with enough materials and supplies to keep sewing workshops going. And Auntie Badly just got a CAC Culture Bearers Grant to continue producing ribbon skirt sewing workshops for queer indigenous communities!

13. Did a residency at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC.

As the Social Practice Artist-in-Residence at the Kennedy Center, I got to work the bones of my new show out at their Reach space in DC this summer. I yanked my BFF Brian Feldman into helping me because he lives there. We ended up (re)writing a bunch of songs to be about food justice. And suddenly we had over an hour of very strange content!

14. Joined the board of API Rise.

I swore many years ago that I’d never be a Board member of anything. Whoops! That all changed when API Rise had asked me first to be on their Advisory Council then as they became a full on non-profit asked me to join their Board. It’s been exciting because we work so directly with system impacted APIs and so I feel like I have so much potential as a board member to help them grow.

15. Joined the board of Creative Capital.

If you’ve followed since 2005, you might remember when I received the Creative Capital Award to make Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I’ve been so grateful for them for that pivotal award which didn’t just give me funds to create that work but introduced me to an entire professional network of theater presenters and funders that I still work with today. I should have known something was fishy when they kept inviting me to special dinners with their board. Turns out it was part of a sneaky courtship to have me join their Board. Super proud of giving back to this artist funding organization. They recently made their Professional Development Program for Artists FREE online!

16. Joined the Board of Trustees of New York Theater Workshop.

As part of our new Board Member orientation, Artistic Director Patricia MacGregor gave me and Martyna Majok scratchers tickets. We didn’t win anything but we are still on the Board of New York Theater Workshop. It’s exciting to be thinking about what the American theater can the vantage point of one of the most awesome theaters in the country!

17. Helped API Rise raise $100k.

If you didn’t get a text from me this year begging you to vote for API Rise in the Gold Futures Challenge, consider yourself in the small minority of people on this planet who managed to avoid my harassment. All the texting of votes absolutely paid off because we won the $100k for API Rise! This will go towards our narrative change strategies which include a podcast project that I will be producing and co-hosting!

18. I helped get my union siblings through the strike with free groceries from World Harvest Food Bank.

Not sure if we almost destroyed World Harvest Food Bank by inviting potentially 180k striking union members to come no-questions-asked to get free groceries during our over 100+ day strike. But I got Glen Curado to agree to this and we definitely helped a lot of union members get through a historically long strike which had AMTMP saying they were “waiting for people to lose their homes” before going back to negotiating. We witnessed over 100 people a day come in for groceries. Many of them in tears because they never had to ask for help before. Many on the verge of losing their homes.

And let me tell you, the food bank got lean like I’d never seen it before. Most folks don’t understand that Food Banks aren’t the government and have nowhere near the capacity that programs like SNAP does to feed people. It’s an emergency food system held up by the charitable contributions of others. Food Banks have no obligation (nor capacity) to feed everyone who walks in. And sadly, this country does not guarantee its citizens to the right to food. For the most part everyone was so grateful and it became an incredible way to witness how a food bank could empower a labor movement. But I also witnessed pushback from folks who didn’t believe actors and writers were “worthy” of free food despite being statistically underinsured and poor. All of this to come in the show.

19. Started work-in-progress showings of “Kristina Wong, #FoodBankInfluencer

Still touring two “older” shows while making a new one. After the Kennedy Center, I found myself with invites to show what I had so far and it was looking sorta like a show! Not sure how my brain is managed these incredible brain flips as I volleyed from completely different projects week to week. Sometimes doing projects on top of each other. Right now, I have over an hour of “work-in-process” material for my new show and also a premiere date of April 5, 2025 at ASU Gammage!


20. I received a Humanitarian Award from Peace Over Violence.

If you are wondering why I’m being super nice to you, it’s because I got a Humanitarian Award and now I’m obligated to not beat you up.

But seriously. Was so honored to be honored to have members of both API Rise and the Auntie Sewing Squad in attendance at the Peace Over Violence annual gala. I was also honored to have Glen Curado of World Harvest Food Bank present me with the award.

21. As part of my continued Artist-in-Residence duties at ASU Gammage, I got to interview Chef Jose Andres in front of thousands of people!

This three year residency at ASU Gammage is whizzing by! With 1.5 more years left, I’ve been frequenting Tempe quite often. One of the coolest parts of my last ASU visit was getting to interview Chef Jose Andres— now he’s the real Food Bank Influencer! I’m loving how this new show on food is bringing me in front of so many different audiences that I haven’t met in previous work.

22. I’m the EP of a couple of films.

Above is Kimberlee Bassford directing “Iris Chang: Power of One”. I’m also an EP on Steven Liang’s narrative film that focuses. What does this mean? I’m a conduit to help them get funding so we can see these incredible films get made. You got money? I got films for you to invest in!

23. I walked the Honolulu Marathon. And had a vacation!

Last year I did the LA Marathon in 8.5 hours. It was my first. I wasn’t planning to do a marathon again, but Brian Feldman signed me up against my will. Despite my best efforts to beat my previous finishing time, we somehow hit an all time worst of 10 hours 37 minutes. It’s an incredible experience which I don’t know if I can do again. It’s just so hard and hot when you take that long.

I just came back from two weeks in Hawaii (a week in Oahu and a week in Kauai). I had an insane amount of guilt about unplugging from the world. It wasn’t a cheap trip either. But between airline miles and little cut corners (eat at grocery stores instead of restaurants!), we made it work. We both needed it so much. I could have spent the whole trip just looking out the window at the water. I had fantasies about leaving my whole art life behind and just working a job as a barista or something in Kauai. But I’m back now. And art calls.

When we got back to San Francisco, where I type this now, Brian surprised me with a certificate from the Smithsonian! He got them to accept my “Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord” poster for their archives. Now I just need to find an archive who will take on the storage space of performance related crap I got.

If you read this far, thank you so much. I wish us a world filled with good communication, humor over violence, and free food in the New Year.