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Pork Filled Productions

Website: porkfilled.com
Budget Size: Between 50 and 100K
Region: Northwest
County: King
Artistic Focus Area: Theatre
Community Accelerator Grant Award: $25,000 in 2024, $5,000 in 2023
Primary Impact Category: Employment, The Future
Mission Statement: At Pork Filled Productions, we produce and develop genre plays, promote Asian American and POC artists, and imagine fantastical, inclusive and FUN universes.

Two people riding a bike. The main person riding the bike sits on the front looking ahead, and the second person sits on the back and looks hopefully into the distance.

Vietgone, Pork Filled Productions, photo by Roger Tang.

On an average day at the office, Roger Tang might be scheming up the best way to construct an airship, design a trans-dimensional portal, or give shape to a ghost. He is twenty-six years into his tenure at the helm of Pork Filled Productions, and is as committed as ever to fostering strange, playful, and highly theatrical worlds onstage.

For someone unfamiliar with the Pacific Northwest’s oldest Asian American-oriented theatre company, Pork Filled’s penchant for genre plays – with a particular affection for stories classified as horror, science fiction, or steampunk – might seem limiting. Roger says it’s the opposite – his decision to create a company with a narrow scope was really about widening the opportunities available to local theatremakers. “These are the type of stories that POC artists aren’t usually seen in,” he told ArtsFund. “For most of the history of Asian American theatre, plays have fallen into three categories. They’re identity plays, they’re history plays, and they’re generational conflict plays. They deal with oppression and how you survive it.” In King County, where 20% of the population is Asian American, ¹but – by Roger’s reckoning – only 5% of roles onstage are played by Asian actors, this means the opportunities available to Asian artists can skew both bleak and repetitive. The work Pork Filled produces may traffic in serious themes, but it always centers joy, optimism, creativity, and fun – a welcome and often giddy respite for artists weary of kitchen sink drama.

Two people mid conversation on a theater stage, both with their hands on a ball.

Other Information: Description: Two people mid conversation on a theater stage, both with their hands on a ball.

A couple mid-dance on a theater stage.

Other Information: Description: A couple mid-dance on a theater stage.

A person on their hands and knees with an arm reached out looking for a cellphone signal.

Other Information: Description: A person on their hands and knees with an arm reached out looking for a cellphone signal.

A classroom full of people talking and dancing near each other.

Other Information: Description: A classroom full of people talking and dancing near each other.

Three people are shown. One person is standing with their arms crossed, and two people are sitting at a table with their arms crossed in conflict.

Other Information: Description: Three people are shown. One person is standing with their arms crossed, and two people are sitting at a table with their arms crossed in conflict.

Two people mid conversation on a theater stage, both with their hands on a ball.
A couple mid-dance on a theater stage.
A person on their hands and knees with an arm reached out looking for a cellphone signal.
A classroom full of people talking and dancing near each other.
Three people are shown. One person is standing with their arms crossed, and two people are sitting at a table with their arms crossed in conflict.

The Community Accelerator Grant has been a major boon for a company of Pork Filled’s size. This fall, it allowed them to produce a show that’s been on their bucket list for a long time: Qui Nguyen’s award-winning Vietgone, a tender, funny, and gleefully profane love story set in the aftermath of the fall of Saigon. While Nguyen has gone on to an illustrious career as a playwright and Marvel Studios writer, Pork Filled was the first regional company to invest in him via a production of his zombified take on Hamlet (Living Dead in Denmark) in 2007. His Vietgone is an especially ambitious undertaking, requiring projections, a live band, and meticulously choreographed ninja battles – thanks in part to their Community Accelerator award, Pork Filled felt prepared to do it justice. Roger noted that the unrestricted nature of the funding had proved especially helpful, allowing the company, which had already budgeted for actor and designer stipends when it received the grant, to also pay its up-and-coming producers and artistic administrators for their work in casting, public relations, and community outreach efforts, all of which helped make the show more accessible to Vietnamese Seattleites.

This kind of support is like water for a small organization like mine. Even though we don’t have paid staff, we still want to pay our artists, and having dependable grant opportunities from year to year is key to being able to make plans. Thanks to this second year of funding, we get to be ambitious.

Roger Tang, Pork Filled Productions

After almost three decades at the helm of Pork Filled, Roger still handles the majority of the company’s grant writing, finances, and administrative duties, but he’s prioritizing sharing his knowledge and making sure the next generation is prepared to step into his shoes one day. “I’m trying to mentor them and demystify things so they can go on to do anything in theatre they put their minds to,” he says. “It’s really about trying to build people up.” Community Accelerator Grant funding supported Pork Filled in sending five emerging theatremakers to ConFest, an annual gathering for Asian American theatre artists, which was this year held in Hawaii. While the work his team saw from a wide array of Native Hawaiian and Pacifica artists was all excellent, Roger considers the networking opportunities ConFest offered to be the most important takeaway for his fledgling
creatives. “Now that they’ve made contact, they can travel to other places, design there, direct there. They’re going to be at the table, and they’re going to be thinking about things in a wider scope. It was an extremely valuable experience, and we would not have been able to do it without this grant.”

When asked about where Pork Filled might be in ten years’ time, Roger laughs – “I’ll be retired by then, I hope!” – but he isn’t afraid to dream big. He hopes to see Pork Filled continuing to be part of the national conversation, drawing diverse artists to Seattle and preparing home-grown artists for illustrious careers. He dreams of a version of Pork Filled that has paid staff and maybe even a space of its own. And, in the more immediate future, he’s considering an addition t to the company’s mission statement. “There’s this concept I’m playing around with that permeates all our work here – I call it ‘hopepunk,’ like steampunk. Our theatre may not always be pretty, it may not be polished, but we’ll make sure it happens. We’ll hope anyway.

¹“2020 Decennial Census,” United States Census Bureau, data.census.gov.

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