Joining us this fall as Target Margin Theater’s new Community Producer is performer, writer, director and arts administrator, Victoria Linchong. The Community Producer is responsible for building and maintaining partnerships between TMT and the community of Sunset Park through developing programming and producing performances. This position is crucial to TMT’s operation and we are thrilled to have her! Read our interview below and learn more about Victoria’s her role at TMT!
Tell us a little bit about yourself… where are you from, what makes you tick, and why do something as crazy as work in theater?
I’m a native New Yorker, born in Loisaida in the East Village. My family is from Taiwan and unlike most Asian-Americans, I actually spent some time there. So I have the weird experience of growing up between inner city and rural chicken farm, between traditional Asian collectivity and brazen American individuality. The one value that both New York City and Taiwan share is a strong sense of community — everything is out on the street and everyone looks out for each other. Taiwanese people and New Yorkers alike will look you in the eye, treat you like an old friend even if you’ve only met this second, and thrust some food in your face. So a sense of community is super important to me. I try to find and make community everywhere I go. And to me, the quintessence of theater is community. Community is created backstage between the actors, the director, designers, crew, and producing staff. And community is also created between the actors and the audience. An intimate experience is shared, everyone listens to one another, and discovers each other. At its heart, theater is a social experience, which I think is even more important now with the internet and technology leading to so much isolation.
Give us five adjectives to describe Sunset Park and five adjectives to describe Target Margin Theater.
Sunset Park: Latino, Chinese, multicultural, growing, authentic
Target Margin: Experimental, smart, brave, innovative, challenging
What narratives do you find the most compelling in theater?
As a woman from a working-class immigrant Taiwanese family, I gravitate to everything marginalized and invisible. I love discovering and unpacking complex untold history, underground communities, and unsung heroes. I also love immigrant stories, especially second or even third generation immigrant stories. By that, I mean this new narrative of people who have only been to the “home country” once during summer vacation when they were nine years old, people who can barely speak to their grandparents, whose facial features and/or skin color identify them as being from somewhere they only have the most tenuous connection to. Maybe it all boils down to overlaps and intersections; past and present, East and West, the seen and unseen. The theater I am most excited by explores the liminal space and finds the red thread uniting us all.
Is there a specific piece or work that introduced you to theater and the performing arts?
In kindergarten, I was given the leading role in the school play. It was called “Spring is Here” and I was Spring. That was basically it. I decided then and there that theater was what I wanted to do. And then I started working professionally in theater when I was 14. I was on the subway going to school when I noticed that someone sitting next to me was reading Backstage and it had all these audition notices. So I bought Backstage that day and it just so happened that Theater for the New City was looking for performers of all ages for their annual summer street theater. I think it must have been my first professional audition and I nailed it. However, I needed to bring my parents to the callback and they were so embarrassing that I ran out of the room crying and hid in a broom closet where I was discovered by the Executive Director. Despite this rather awkward beginning, I ended up working for Theater for the New City for the next ten years, going from a teenage actress in their street theater company, to producing theater, to doing administrative work.
What’s something that you’re extremely proud of? From work or life in general.
As an artist, you’re always dissatisfied with yourself. But sometimes I look at my resume or read an interview that I’m in and I’m amazed that I’ve come as far as I have. My parents are not in the arts and they are very discouraging. I am a high school drop out who never really attended college. I’m a teenage runaway, who was a single mom. But somehow, I’ve managed to produce work and perform in New York City, Berlin, London, and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It’s so hard to keep going, be persistent, and believe in yourself despite constant rejection. I’m proud that I’ve somehow managed to do this despite all odds.
What are you excited about in the year ahead with TMT as their new Community Producer?
I’m excited to find ways that a theater might engage in a community, especially an immigrant community that might not be so very familiar with theater. And I’m very excited to learn more about the Sunset Park community. I want to eat in every single restaurant on 8th Avenue and try every single taco truck.