Comedian Kristina Wong on Crafting a Community During COVID

KQED's Forum

KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 5 April 2024

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the performing arts world, comedian Kristina Wong found herself adrift. But dozens of frantic calls and one Facebook group later, she was overseeing a network of volunteers – the Auntie Sewing Squad – that churned out hundreds of thousands of homemade masks for those in need. The acts of service and communal care she guided and found are the inspiration for her one woman play “Kristina Wong: Sweatshop Overlord.” We’ll talk with Wong about crafting, community, social justice and the comedy show that brings them all together. Guests: Kristina Wong, comedian and performance artist - she's a Doris Duke Artist Award winner, Guggenheim Fellow and a Pulitzer Prize finalist in Drama. Her one woman show "Kristina Wong: Sweatshop Overlord" is playing now through May 5th at The Strand in San Francisco. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for Key QBD Podcasts comes from San Francisco International Airport. At SFO, you can shop,
0:06.7	dine, and unwind before your flight. Go ahead, treat yourself. Learn more about SFO restaurants and
0:12.7	shops at flysfo.com. Support for forum comes from Broadway SF, presenting Parade, the musical revival based on a true story.
0:23.1	From three-time Tony-winning composer Jason Robert Brown comes the story of Leo and Lucille Frank,
0:29.6	a newlywed Jewish couple struggling to make a life in Georgia. When Leo is accused of an
0:35.3	unspeakable crime, it propels them into an unimaginable test of faith, humanity, justice, and devotion.
0:43.3	The riveting and gloriously hopeful parade plays the Orpheum Theater for three weeks only, May 20th through June 8th.
0:51.7	Tickets on sale now at Broadwaysf.com.
0:56.6	From KQED.
0:58.0	From KQED.
1:13.5	From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal. Christina Wong grew up in the sunset before leaving to become an award-winning and popular
1:18.6	comedian and performance artist.
1:20.9	She returns to the city this month with her latest work, Christina Wong Sweatshop Overlord,
1:27.0	based on her very real experience running the
1:29.0	Auntie Sewing Squad, a collective of volunteers who churned out hundreds of
1:33.9	thousands of masks over the first 500 days of the pandemic.
1:38.0	We'll talk about the power of community, the power of aunties, and why it's still so hard
1:42.3	to process what happened during the pandemic.
1:44.5	That's all coming up next after this news.
2:00.6	Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. It's nearly impossible to remember what the early weeks of the pandemic were like. Go back and read some emails you sent in early March or look at some Instagram stories from February to April. The ship that happened for all of us in different ways was so unprecedented.
2:20.9	So much of American life seems to be reckoning with deep history, but that was a period of
2:25.7	total novelty.
	...

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