Fetish

Playwright/Actor
Produced at the Players Theatre Loft, New York, NY (January 2008)

Are Asian women “the other white meat”? The play depicts Matt and Sophie, a young couple about to get married. He is white, she is Asian-American and while this has become the most common and socially acceptable interracial pairing, the two must contend with the ways in which race and ethnicity still matter to them in an era after political correctness.

“Wu’s strongest suit is her acerbic humor when it comes to the racial and sexual stereotypes,” –nytheatre.com

“Joyce Wu’s cynical new drama updates Shakespeare’s Othello,” –Time Out New York

‘M’ Game: An Adaptation of Macbeth

Actor
Produced at the 14th Street Theater, New York, NY: October 2007

The M Game explores the idea of five women behind Macbeth. Shakespeare’s most complicated and commanding female role, Lady Macbeth, is imagined in this production as five different women who each represent different aspects of the character’s personality. All appearing on the stage simultaneously, the ladies portray the complexity of the woman Macbeth calls his “dearest partner of greatness.”

“[A] forceful and dynamic performance… compelling to watch.” – The Cinema Source

Other People

Playwright/Producer/Actor
Produced at Wow Café Theater, New York, NY
(May 2006 /February 2007)

Based on Sartre’s seminal existential piece No Exit, the play is about a young couple with relationship problems who decide to go home with a woman they meet in a bar. The two women are each other’s opposites, their fears and fantasies embodied: one is Asian/multiracial, intellectual and sardonic, the other blond, bubbly and “All-American.” The show explores the relationship between identity and sexuality and the ways in which self-perception is determined by desires of the opposite sex.

“[A] concise and provocative evening of theatre… a hellacious amount of thought-provoking fun.” – nytheatre.com

“[A] promising young playwright” – Backstage

Passing

Co-writer/Performer
Produced at Wow Café Theater, New York, NY
(February/May 2006)

An investigative dance-theater work that examines how people of mixed race or ethnicity form their identities. Using masks and a movement based narrative, an ensemble cast of ten women question the way skin color, hair, eyes, noses and our need to belong, determine our identities. Moving back and forth through time, journeying from the particular to the universal, the scientific to the historical.

The Hepburn Fallacy

Playwright/Producer/Director/Actor
Produced at Burton Taylor Theatre, Oxford, England (May 2003)
Produced at Lydia Mendelssohn Theater, Ann Arbor, MI (May 2004)

A post-modern romantic comedy about the last true disciple of the Audrey Hepburn age. Follows a young woman and her wild imagination through all its neurotic machinations during a brief courtship with Mr. Right on his way out the door. Her gay best friend and her Jamaican cleaning lady seemingly play to stereotype until they illuminate the complexities of sexual orientation and faith.