Join Pao Arts Center for a night of performances, curated by Jane Park. Featuring a plethora of talents from a variety of disciplines, celebrating the plenitude of individuality and talent in the Asian diaspora, without explanation or apology.
Free | Suggested Donation $10
ABOUT ASIAN GLOW
Asian Glow is a performance series for the Asian diaspora in Boston, particularly for creatives seeking affinity on their stage. Asian artists often face tokenism and pressure to reference their cultural ancestry, while also being treated as monolith under the terms “Asian American” and “model minority.” Asian Glow encourages artists to be seen as individuals and perform as the majority, without explanation or apology.
ABOUT THE CURATOR
Jane Park is a musician who lives in Cambridge and works at Hancock Church. She is the songwriter for local band Poor Eliza and plays violin in the New England Philharmonic. In 2018, she celebrated her EP Release Ghost Town with a 40-city East Coast/Midwest tour and created Asian Glow. In 2020, the COVID-19 lockdown put a halt to busy-ness and brought Jane to hiking and watching KDramas. She is grateful to be here on Massa-adchu-es-et and Pawtucket land, and privileged to be a part of this community.
About the Performers
Nora Panahi
Nora Panahi is an Iranian-American stand-up comic and drag king with a manual transmission. She has been featured in HBO's Women in Comedy Festival, the YallaPunk Arts Festival, and Jacque's Cabaret High Key. You can find her performing in and out of drag all over Boston, New York, and New England. Panahi is also a staff writer for Sabah Il-Khara, a daytime talk show for the queer SWANA (South West Asian, North African) crowd.
Felice Ling
Felice Ling is an occasionally international street performer and magician who can be found most often performing in Boston's Faneuil Hall. Internationally, she's worked the streets of the Edinburgh, Edmonton, and Adelaide Fringe Festivals. Locally, she is the executive producer of Boston's only open mic magic show -- the Boston Magic Lab -- where she is working to build a magic community that welcomes and bolsters diverse local talent. Sometimes funny, often awkward, and hopefully astonishing, this is Just Felice.
The Michael Character
The Michael Character is the long-running musical project of James Ikeda and a fluid assemblage of collaborators. Although the band's sound has changed many times across its fifteen album run (and counting), it's always basically been politically-committed, historically-minded, socially-engaged songwriting ground and stuffed into an acoustic punk hot dog casing of one sort or another. For fans of diner breakfasts, 8-ball pool, novel applications of niche performance theory, the historian's craft, and militant unionism.
TIFFY
TIFFY is the solo project of multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, producer Tiffany Sammy. TIFFY represents what it means for genres to clash and meld in 2023, preserving a bottled-up mix of dream rock, sugar pop, and coarse punk. Often boiling the terminology down to "soft punk". Her music has been featured in the FADER, Paste Magazine, NPR and Vanyaland. She actively plays throughout New England with her live band, and has been a featured artist at music festivals such as Thing in the Spring Music & Arts Festival (Peterborough, NH), Foreside Music Festival (Kittery, ME) and Somerville’s multicultural arts festival ArtBeat.
Zayde Buti
Zayde Buti is a Boston-based artist who combines music, comedy, and performance art to offer entertaining and thought-provoking social commentary. His unconventional pop songs, offbeat humor, and eccentric behavior make for captivating performances on stage, screen, and in public spaces.
COVID-19 Policy:
All visitors are required to be masked during the duration of the performance. Performers may be unmasked while performing. View more on our visitor policy.
Contact | Ashley Yung, Performance Program Manager