There's a great post up on the NY Daily about the Rising Circle Theater:
Of the many hands in the bowl from which Q Up sprang, none was more prominent than that of Nancy Kim, a Korean-American artist whose one-woman show, "How To Find My Inner Asian," provides both the idea and inspiration for it.Cool.
The play is Kim's take on a variety of issues affecting Asian women. She got the idea several years ago after she discovered several self-help books targeting Asian-Americans that she found hilarious.
"One was called 'Dating Asian: A Guide to How to Find Asians and Date them,'" Kim said.
"I wanted to do a show that kinda made fun of these books," Kim said.
"I mentioned that to some people in Rising Circle, and they encouraged me to make this happen."
Kim, 32, performed the piece at the Manhattan Theatre Source in 2008-2009. She kicked off Q Up with a Wednesday night performance for the students. Other instructors in the Q Up program include Brooklyn-based Taiwanese-American Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai and Indian artist Deepti Gupta. Kim said she has long wanted to mount a confidence-building program such as Q Up that would benefit young women like herself.
"When I was a young woman, if I wanted arts in my life, I had to go seek it out myself because I didn't see other people who looked like me doing that," said Kim, who grew up in Woodside, Queens, before moving to Syosset, L.I.
"I wanted to do something for the 16-year-old girl who didn't have a place to go and didn't have people to look up to." Fortunately, Kim also found Rising Circle, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year.
