Kyoung H. Park is a North Korean playwright/director, born and raised in Santiago, Chile, currently living in unceded territory of the Lenape. As Artistic Director of Kyoung’s Pacific Beat, a non-profit, peacemaking theater company, he has devised three full-length plays — disOriented, TALA, and PILLOWTALK — and created over 35 community-based, experimental projects including performances for new media. His work centers stories of (im)migration, queerness, trauma, identity and the ways these intersect in communities of color; it’s described as “intensely personal” by American Theater Magazine and “very much of this moment” by the New York Times. Kyoung’s Pacific Beat has been a resident company at The Tank, Bushwick Starr, Baryshnikov Arts Center, LaGuardia Performing Arts Center, BRIC Arts Media, Performance Project @ University Settlement and Kyoung has worked internationally in Santiago (Chile), Rio de Janeiro, London, New Delhi, and Seoul. Kyoung has been Writer-in-Residence at Sanskriti Pratisthan (New Delhi), Vermont Studio Center, Centro Cultural Gabriela Mistral (Santiago, Chile) and he is a member of the Ma-Yi Writer’s Lab, NYTW Usual Suspect, and co-founder of The Sol Project. He is currently a Steering Committee member of the Mosaic Network and Fund, Advisory Council member of Hue Arts NYC, and 2022 APAP Conference Committee member.
Kyoung is recipient of numerous fellowships including the 2021 Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship (Recommended Alternate), 2019-2020 Dramatist Guild Fellowship, 2018-2020 APAP Leadership Fellowship, 2018-2019 Intercultural Leadership Institute Fellowship, 2017 Creative Mellon Fellowship, 2015-2017 Field Leadership Fund Fellowship, 2014 Target Margin Theater Inst. for Theater-Making Fellowship, 2009-2011 Columbia University Dean’s Fellowship, and was named a 2010 UNESCO-Aschberg Laureate (Paris). He is recipient of commissions from Mixed Blood Theater Company (Minneapolis), Latinx Theater Commons/Howlround (New York) and Kyoung has received grants from the Arvon Foundation (London), GK Foundation (South Korea), MAP Fund, Venturous Theater Fund, TCG Global Connections, Brooklyn Arts Council, Howard Gilman Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant, and has been a grant panelist for the NEA, TCG, ART/NY and NALAC. He holds an MFA in Playwriting from Columbia University and an MA in International Politics from Kyung Hee University’s Graduate Institute for Peace Studies.
