Open House

Experience Asian Arts Initiative like never before at our Open House! Explore newly renovated and reimagined spaces through live performances, hands-on demonstrations, a pop-up exhibition, food and drinks, and a first look at the technologies, venues, and creative spaces now available for your performances, events, meetings, rehearsals, retreats, and more!

Throughout the day, we will feature four performances in our Black Box Theater:

Michelle Nguyen (@moonsquid_nights) will showcase a sneak peak of her interactive play set to premier later this year. In this multi-media exploration of childhood memories, the audience is invited to participate as the imaginary friends of a young girl. What starts off as "all fun and games" soon escalates into a series of moral dilemmas and life-changing decisions.

Sangita Pawar (@pawarsangita.m) presents “We Dance At Home, Alone”, an intimate imagining of the South Asian American domestic space as a place for radical de- and reconstruction of the immigrant self and how it relates to the United States as an empire.

Alyse James (@alyselyselyse) presents “W(hite)omen in the Afternoon” is a clown/performance art piece that asks what it takes to be a good person and a good ally in 2026. This excerpt of the show will feature a DEI consultant who the creative team have brought on to help them answer this question.

Crossroads Comedy (@xroadscomedyphilly) will perform several short form games in the style of Whose Line Is It Anyway and pull from audience suggestions to drive the show. Your ideas will be used on the spot to create the funny stuff in a show made just for you!

In our newly renovated Project Space, we will present a pop-up exhibition, Between Black and White: Philadelphia’s Chinatown by Alex Wong, a Philadelphia-based street photographer, showcasing his photographs that follows a philosophy he coined, “Freetography”, which he embraces a free and spontaneous style of street photography, unconstrained by rigid compositional rules, artistic fashions, or the expectations of critics.

This is a free event and open to public. Stay tuned for more details about the performances and programs!