Creative Capital

Byron Au Yong, Aaron Jafferis Stuck Elevator

Discipline
Performing Arts
Medium
Opera
Subject

Biography

Cultural Identity

Language
State
Washington
Year
2009
Status
In Production

Description

Stuck Elevator is an operatic solo performance inspired by the real-life experience of the Happy Dragon restaurant delivery man who was trapped in a Bronx elevator for three days. Au Yong and Jafferis’s project mixes songs in English and Mandarin accompanied by amplified scrap metal constructed and performed by percussionist Paul Kikuchi. This super-heroic stationary journey finds an illegal immigrant and a fortune cookie trapped between fear and hope.

Byron Au Yong

Byron Au Yong composes songs of dislocation for Asian, European and handmade instruments. His works have been featured in concert halls, museums and sit…
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Aaron Jafferis

Aaron Jafferis is a poet, librettist and performer. His works include the libretto for the hip-hop musical Kingdom, the solo theater work No Lie, and …
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Project Updates

2011: Jafferis and Au Yong receive NEFA National Theater Pilot Award for the development of Stuck Elevator
2011: Stuck Elevator is chosen for three-week developmental retreat as part of the Sundance Institute Theatre Lab
2010: Byron Au Yong has workshop reading of Stuck Elevator at the International Festival of Arts & Ideas in New Haven, CT
2010: Stuck Elevator is chosen for a two-week residency at the Yale Institute for Music Theatre
2009: Byron Au Yong and Aaron Jafferis present a workshop of their Creative Capital supported project Stuck Elevator at Pearl Studios in NYC
2009: The Museum of Chinese in America hosts a reading of Stuck Elevator