A Little Past Seven O’Clock on September 2
1885. Rock Springs, Wyoming. This sound-collage opera reckons with the lives and the afterlives Chinese immigrant miners massacred by white immigrant miners. Using a libretto of words distilled from firsthand accounts of survivors and a score composed onto an erased history, this project re-imagines and re-centers the narratives and poetics of Asian-American voices.
Creative Team
A Little Past Seven O'clock Creative Team
AJ Layague
AJ Layague is a playwright and composer whose multi-media works have been performed at Montalvo Arts, Side Street Projects, Pitzer Art Gallery, China-ASEAN Festival in Nanning, China, and Agosto Foundation Prague, among others. She’s received grants and residences from the American Composers Forum, American Music Center, Center for Cultural Innovation, Humanities for the Public Good, Literary Managers & Dramaturgs, Durfee Foundation, Getty Foundation, Centrum Arts, and has published and presented research on such topics as code-switching, race and theater casting, Chinese film music, and Asian-American hip hop, and has been a guest lecturer at National Taiwan University, USC, UCI, and Mills College. She has degrees from Stanford University, CalArts, UC San Diego, and a post-doc in Asian Studies/Music (Occidental College).
Yumiko Morita
Yumiko Morita was born in Tokyo, Japan. She earned a Bachelor of Music Composition at Toho Gakuen School of Music, a Masters in composition with honor at New England Conservatory, and a Ph.D. at the University of California, San Diego. She has composed, performed, and taught at the Boston Symphony’s Project STEP, the Peabody Community School (Cambridge), the American Composers Forum (Los Angeles), the University of California, San Diego, and Chapman University. Morita has won the Round Top Festival (Texas), Piano Duo Competition (Japan), the ALEA III International Competition (Boston), PatsyLu Prize of International Alliance for Woman in Music (New York), CAP Award from New Music USA, and Tom Nee Commission from La Jolla Symphony (San Diego). Her works are widely performed in the U.S., Europe, and Asia.
Kalean Ung
Kalean Ung is an award-winning actress, singer, and interdisciplinary artist whose work ranges from Shakespeare to experimental theatre and contemporary opera. She’s performed at The Kirk Douglas Theatre, Theatre @ Boston Court, REDCAT, Disney Hall, The Hammer Museum, Highways Performance Space, The Actors’ Gang, among others, and collaborated with Critical Mass Performance Group, The Industry, Independent Shakespeare Company, Four Larks Theatre (Ovation Award: The Temptation of St. Antony), and CalArts Center for New Performance. Her solo play LETTERS FROM HOME was developed and performed through residencies including UC Irvine, where she co-curated a companion exhibit with the Southeast Asian Archival Library, and her voice acting can be heard in the English version of Denis Do’s award-winning, animated feature about the Cambodian genocide, FUNAN.
Stay Connected
3×3 Projects: Creative Collaborations from Isolation
Artists collaborate all the time, but not always from a distance. In our present reality of isolation, artists must find different avenues for the creation and presentation of work. With this in mind, the Fine Arts Center and Performing Arts at Colorado College invited artists of the Rocky Mountain West and American Southwest to pitch collaborative, multidisciplinary projects to premiere online in the coming months. More on 2021 3×3 Projects