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4:00 PM-8:00 PM

Yide Cai: Steeped(品)

Studio 170 Artist Residency|Open Rehearsal

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keyvisual Steeped (c) Cai

keyvisual Steeped (c) Cai

Stop by and see what playwright, poet, and translator Yide Cai and his team theatre director and multidisciplinary performance artist Skye Xiaotian Lu and multidisciplinary scenographer, producer, and devising artist Qingan Zhang have been up to during their Studio 170 artist residency! Interact wtih the artists and have a cup of tea during the breaks.

Steeped(品) is a metatheatrical play that reimagines the Boston Tea Party from the perspective of the tea itself — a leaf that refuses to be a lifeless symbol but rather faces its death. It is set on the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, where two actors are rehearsing a new Boston production about the Tea Party written by a playwright based in New York. One night, the tea puppet they are playing as a prop speaks to them, and tells them that it is the tea lying at the bottom of Boston Harbor for the past 250 years, plucked from a tree in China, processed, shipped, commodified, and ultimately dumped into the sea.

Made possible by the generous support from the 501(c)(3) organization Studio 170 at Goethe-Institut Boston, Inc. 

About the Artists

  • From Shenzhen, China, Yide Cai (蔡逸得) is a playwright, poet, and translator, now an MFA Playwriting candidate at Boston University. His play The Rice Eaters debuted Off-Broadway at the 2025 Broadway Bound Theatre Festival, while his short play A Middle Passage won the 50th Annual Off-Off-Broadway Festival and is set to be published by Concord Theatricals. He is developing his new play Steeped with Pipeline Theater’s Playlab in 2026, and is also one of the playwrights for The Episodic Theatre Project Season 3. As a fellow of the Laboratory for Global Performance & Politics and a resident artist at Goethe-Institut Boston, he is always chasing connections across distance.

  • Skye Xiaotian Luis a theatre director and multidisciplinary performance artist working across directing, dramaturgy, choreography, and documentary film. Her practice moves between international theatrical traditions and cultural contexts, exploring questions of identity, memory, and borders while pushing the boundaries between different art forms. Often through conceptual processes, she creates physically driven and organic works where meanings can be created for the people.
    Her directing projects include Die Kantine (Berlin), The Delayed Trial (In-N-Out Theatre, Beijing), and Three Sisters · Waiting for Godot, as well as new works at Eugene O’Neil Theater Center and experimental workshops such as Godot Complex and I Can’t Imagine Tomorrow. She has collaborated as dramaturg, choreographer, and assisted on productions including Intractable Woman, Our Class (4 Lucille Lortel Awards), and The Dybbuk (Elliot Norton Awards), and has studied directing with director Yury Butusov. Her artistic practice is informed by philosophy, literature, or the world, her ongoing journey across lands and cultures.

  • Qingan Zhang is a multidisciplinary scenographer, producer, and devising artist mainly based in New York and Boston. Her works explore narratives embedded in her designs beyond forms or performance methods. She seeks to empower physicality within the storytelling of the integrated spatial experience. Through layers of materials, objects, multimedia and objective metaphors, she juxtaposes materiality of the built environment and externalization of the intangible mental fantasy rooted in the narratives.
     

  • Naomi Kim is a Boston-based actor and combat choreographer with training from theatre and choreography schools in Boston, New York, and London. She was most recently seen in A View From the Bridge (Apollinaire Theatre Company) and in Portland Stage Company’s staged reading of Like Flies: A Rage Play. Off-Broadway: A Stormy Night (Emerging Artists Theatre Company). Regional credits include The Leopard Women (Teatro Chelsea) and Hitch (Moonbox Theatre Company). Her recent fight direction work includes Wait Until Dark (Greater Boston Stage Company), La Linda Tierra Que Busco Yo (Teatro Chelsea), Macbeth (Actors’ Shakespeare Project), and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (ASP). She is also a teaching artist with Actors’ Shakespeare Project.
     

  • Jaime José Hernández’s credits include Off-Broadway work at The Public Theater in The Other Americans (with John Leguizamo). Regional credits include Oedipus El Rey and John Proctor is the Villain (Huntington Theatre Company), A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Much Ado About Nothing (Commonwealth Shakespeare Company), The Hombres (Gloucester Stage/Teatro Chelsea), Fabulation (Lyric Stage), Sweat (Gamm Theatre), Native Gardens (Dorset Theatre Festival), and Nosotros La Gente (B Street Theatre). His television credits include Power Book II: Ghost (STARZ) and S.W.A.T. (CBS). Jaime is a founding member of Teatro Chelsea and is represented by Entertainment Lab.
     

  • Xinyue Zhang ist eine Designerin und Schneiderin, die sich auf Kostümdesign und -anfertigung spezialisiert hat. Auf der Grundlage solider handwerklicher Fähigkeiten und ihrer Leidenschaft für historische Mode schafft sie detailreiche, charakterbezogene Arbeiten, die Tradition mit zeitgenössischem Stil verbinden. In ihrem Schaffensprozess legt sie Wert auf Zusammenarbeit, Präzision und die transformative Kraft von Kleidung in der darstellenden Kunst.