How we started
[Insert founding story here — drawn from interviews around Cheese and Other Oddities, 2012. Why did the org start? What was missing in Austin? What was the first impulse?]
What we set out to do
We started with a simple mission: produce works by or about Asian Americans and other underrepresented voices, and increase dialogue about these experiences through the performance arts.
Over ten years the mission grew — not by replacing what came before, but by adding to it. We learned that community voice needed a consistent space, not just a stage. That mental health was an underrepresented experience as much as race or ethnicity. That the audience was as important as the performers. That changing minds takes time, and sustained presence is how you do it.
The mission today is what it always was, plus everything the work taught us.
How we work
When we tell someone’s story, they are in the room where it’s made. As director, writer, or performer — at least two of the three, every time. This is not a guideline. It is how we work. It is the difference between representation as a gesture and representation as a practice.
What we make and what we sustain
We work in two modes simultaneously. We make finished work — original productions, festivals, workshops, and media — built from the lived experiences of the communities they represent. And we sustain ongoing spaces — consistent, recurring, protected — so those communities always have somewhere to go, whether or not there’s a production on the calendar.
These are not separate activities. They are two sides of the same mission. The work needs the space. The space needs the work.
Ten years
From 2012 to 2022, we produced over 100 projects across theater, festival, workshop, open mic, podcast, and community event formats. We worked in small studios of under 100 people because intimacy was the point — what happens on a small stage in a full room is different from what happens in a theater of thousands. Audiences stayed after. Sometimes long after. That’s how we knew the work was doing what it was meant to do.
Who we are
[Insert information about the founding team, artistic director, and key collaborators here. Include Leng Wong as founding artistic director and any other core team members you want to name.]