‘Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord’ on the West Coast - Fall 2022

After serving as Assistant Director on the world premiere at New York Theatre Workshop during the autumn of 2021, Miranda is returning to 2022 Pulitzer Prize Finalist Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord for its West Coast tour as the Associate Director. It played La Jolla Playhouse in September and October and is currently in previews at Portland Center Stage at the Armory, where Miranda was the remount director. If you’re in the PDX area, come check it out!

KRISTINA WONG, SWEATSHOP OVERLORD, written and performed by Kristina Wong, with direction from Chay Yew, scenic design by Junghyun Georgia Lee, costumes by Linda Cho, lighting by Amith Chandrashaker, sound by Mikhail Fiksel and Adam Salberg, and projections by Caite Hevner.

‘confirm me’ Reading with Leviathan Lab - August 2022

Over a year after playwright christine heesun hwang and Miranda first started collaborating on confirm me, an in-person reading was had, produced by Leviathan Lab, an award-winning not-for-profit creative studio whose mission is the advancement of Asian and Asian American performing artists and their work (Producing Artistic Director, Ariel Estrada, with support from Jennifer Ogasian and Leela Kiyawat).

The reading featured actors Jessica Boevers Bogart, Gabi Carrubba, Julia Cassandra, Sam Hamashima, Shigeko Sara Suga, Cindy Tsai, and Samantha Williams.

NYTW 2050 Artistic Fellowship - Summer 2022 through Summer 2023

I’m so excited about this that I don’t even want to write it in the third person – I’m going to be a 2050 Artistic Fellow at New York Theatre Workshop for the 2022-2023 season! The cohort also includes theatermakers Thaddeus McCants, Aileen Wen McGroddy, Attilio Rigotti, Andrew Rodriguez, and Minghao Tu.

The fellowship is named in celebration of the U.S. Census Bureau’s projection that by the year 2050, there will be no single racial or ethnic majority in the United States. The 2050 Artistic Fellows are early-career artists who can engage with the community and offer unique perspectives on the transformations taking place in the American landscape. Fellows are awarded both a stipend and an additional artistic development fund that supports projects, theatre tickets, research, or travel.

“We are deeply humbled to welcome these six artists as 2050 Artistic Fellows for the 2022-23 season,” said Aaron Malkin, Literary director and Dramaturg, and Rachel Silverman, Director of Project Development, Workshops, and Residencies, in a statement. “Miranda, Thaddeus, Aileen, Attilio, Andrew, and Minghao were selected from hundreds of applicants for their boundless curiosity and distinctive visions, and we look forward to supporting their growth as artists and building community throughout the year.” - American Theatre, July 5, 2022

Workshop Production of ‘No Mercy’ with Moxie Arts NY - July 2022

As the final stage of the ‘21-’22 Moxie Incubator, Miranda co-directed a workshop production of SMJ’s No Mercy, with SMJ and Alex Might. It featured performances by Kayla Zanakis, Maya Musial, Charlotte Vaughn Raines, and Chloé Lexia Worthington. Fight and intimacy direction was by Alex Might, with lighting design by Elizabeth M. Stewart, set design by Kailey Hays-Lenihan, sound design by Sasha Hawkins, costume design by Aryn Geier, stage management by Aryn Geier and Ashley Milling, line produced by Natalie Rine and Angelica McEwan, and executive produced by K. Hernandez Friend and Madelyn Paquette of Moxie Arts NY.

Maya, the only Latina wrestler in Trailblazer Championship Wrestling, has been dreaming of winning her first-ever TCW Championship for her entire life. Over the span of one night, Maya must face her white girlfriend, her white rival, her white boss, and the commercialization of acceptable racism in route to finally achieving her dream. No Mercy explores women's wrestling, legacy, family, queerness, being mixed-race, and cultural identity.

“No Mercy” ran at The DR2 Theatre in Union Square from July 7th through July 10th, 2022. Photos by Danny Bristoll. Reviews can be read here and here.

Speak Up, Act Out: Celebrating Student Voices - June 2022

Recognizing the importance of amplifying young writers and activists, the New Victory, The Lillys, and The 24 Hour Plays partnered together to present a showcase of monologues written by New York City students, inspired by the life and legacy of celebrated playwright Lorraine Hansberry. Chosen by a panel of arts professionals, the student finalists, who ranged in age from 11 to 13, were involved in every step of the rehearsal and production process, which culminated in having their words performed and directed by professional artists, including Quincy Tyler Bernstein, Kate Whoriskey, Anne Kauffman, Jessica Hecht, April Mathis, and Jenny Koons.

Miranda directed “Inside the Mind of Us” by Lily Lanzetta, featuring Nikkole Salter. The work of these amazing young writers and artists can be viewed here.

Short Stack PlayFest with Ma-Yi and & 2g Productions - June 2022

Miranda is one of five directors participating in Short Stack PlayFest, produced by Second Generation Productions and Ma-Yi Theater Company as a benefit for Heart of Dinner. PlayFest matches AAPI playwrights from all ranges of career levels with directors and actors to present two nights of new, five-minute comedic works.

Featuring playwrights Christopher Chen, Dustin Chinn, Jesse Jae Hoon, Kimber Lee, Durra Leung, Alex Lin, Kate Rigg, Arif Silverman, Lloyd Suh, and Ran Xia, with direction from Miranda Cornell, Nana Dakin, Cara Hinh, Margaret Lee, and Ry Szelong.

Miranda will direct two new pieces by Lloyd Suh (The Chinese Lady) and Durra Leung (Durra Leung’s Lullabies for Motherf*ckers Vol. 1).

Hunter MFA playwrights Festival - May 2022

In May, Miranda had the honor of collaborating with playwright Jesse Jae Hoon for a reading of his thesis play, SOMEBODY IS LOOKING BACK AT ME, for the Rita and Burton Goldberg MFA Playwriting Program at Hunter College. The cast featured Amanda Centeno, Lydia Gaston, David Lee Huynh, Angel Lin, Sami Ma, and Futaba Shioda, with stage management by Alyssa Rios. The reading was held on May 12 at the Frederick Loewe Theatre.

In a rapidly developing Chinatown, bestselling novelist Olivia is settling into her new luxury penthouse blocks away from the public housing where she grew up. But as she becomes reacquainted with her changing neighborhood, she will be thrown into the past in ways that will change the way she views herself and her community forever.

DEAR Evan Hansen Promotion - February 2022

After ten weeks as the Directing Apprentice with Dear Evan Hansen, Miranda is so excited to be returning to the team as the Assistant Director for both the Broadway and North American Touring productions. The directing team includes director Michael Greif, Senior Associate Director Danny Sharron, and Associate Directors Trey Ellett and Candis C. Jones.

roundabout underground reading series - January 2022

Miranda is thrilled to be directing the brilliant Daria Miyeko Marinelli’s new play Beautiful Blessed Child for Roundabout Underground’s annual reading festival. The reading was initially scheduled to happen in person at The 52nd Street Project, but out of an abundance of caution due to the rising COVID-19 cases in NYC, the reading will proceed virtually.

Aimiko is moving across the country to start a life with t/her partner and invites t/her mother, Sharon, to accompany them. (Sharon has never heard of a mother daughter-child road trip.) When Aimiko's Saab-93 breaks down in the middle of Nevada, time and space begin to blur, and soon tales of cannibals, cranes, and samurais guide their journey into the desert and far beyond. Beautiful Blessed Child is a lyrical reckoning about the dreams we give up for the people we love and how the people we love can become our dreams.

ZAPI ARTISTS & CITY ARTIST CORPS GRANT - OCTOBER 2021

ZAPI Artists, with the assistance of a grant from City Artist Corps, is presenting a developmental workshop and presentation of heesun hwang’s 4/4, which Miranda will be directing. She’s excited to reunite with frequent collaborator heesun and dive into this new play (Miranda loves apocalypse/dystopia plays).

Washed with the world’s disillusionment, four young strangers embark on a government-sanctioned journey together. Over the course of one night, they share and bond over experiences from the memories they have of “life before the world ended.”

The reading will feature actors Lianah Sta. Ana, Sushma Saha, Ashil Lee, Eric Cheng, and Yasmin Pascall. It is produced by ZAPI Artists - Cindy Tsai, Sofia Khwaja, and Liana Sta. Ana with assistance from Samantha Toy Ozeas and jehan “jay” ayesha.

hedgepig ensemble theatre + ma-yi - expand the canon - September 2021

Miranda is thrilled to be directing a reading for Hedgepig Ensemble Theatre’s EXPAND THE CANON festival. The reading of Yang Jiang’s Forging the Truth (translated by Amy Dooling) is presented in partnership with Ma-Yi Theatre Company.

The Expand the Canon list is an annual guide that makes slotting classic plays by women and underrepresented genders into your season and syllabi easy. Both a celebration and a call to action, Expand the Canon demands space in the classical canon for more diverse playwrights, many of whom were underproduced or utterly un-produced in their lifetimes. - Hedgepig Ensemble Theatre

Adventures in dramaturgy - Bay area playwrights festival - july 2021

Immediately after Kim Loo, Miranda is hopping onto an artistic team at the Playwrights' Foundation’s 44th Bay Area Playwrights Festival. Miranda has always been a dramaturgical director and has assisted many writer/directors, so aiding playwright Sam Hamashima on Supposed Home seemed like a perfect fit.

Shiyo left the Japanese American Concentration Camps a long time ago...or so she thought. Past and present become one landscape for this anime adventure as enemies are revealed, companions are found, trauma is unpacked, and what was only thought becomes (un)spoken word.

KIM LOO gets a redo at new ohio ice factory - july 2021

Miranda is honored to join writer-performers Lisa Helmi Johanson and Kimberly Immanuel on the premiere of their new piece, KIM LOO GETS A REDO at the New Ohio Theatre Ice Factory festival. The bad-ass, all AAPI team includes designers Jiyoun Chang (lighting design Tony-nominee for Slave Play) designing the lights and set, Sun Hee Kil (Tony-winning sound team for Choir Boy) on sound, as well as stage manager Fran Acuña-Almiron, and orchestrator Keiji Ishiguri. To read more about Johanson & Immanuel and their journey to make this piece, click here.

Kim Loo Gets a Redo is an original piece that takes history and shifts the paradigm to the AAPI perspective. Lisa Helmi Johanson and Kimberly Immanuel take the audience through their personal reflections on the intertwining of the lesser-known history of the Kim Loo Sisters and the erasure of AAPI women both past and present. With reimagined multi-instrumental arrangements of 1930's and 1940's tunes, original music performed both pre-recorded and live, percussive tap dance, and spoken word, this genre-crossing piece aims to reclaim agency lost.

our town in topaz - April/may 2021

As the main component of her Van Lier project, Miranda has been spending the past year creating a piece of theater based on the real-life production of Our Town that happened in the Topaz Concencration Camp during WWII. Because of her connection to the piece, her spring has been full of Our Town-related content.

In April, she was interviewed by Katie Vasquez of News12 for a feature about Asian-Americans in the arts. The piece aired in mid-May to commemorate AAPI Heritage month in the wake of the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes. In this interview, Miranda talks about her family’s history, her background in theater, and why AAPI representation in the arts is so important. To watch, click here.

Miranda is also joining the producing team for the National Asian American Theatre Company’s benefit reading of Our Town. After filming, Miranda sat down with NAATCO’s Creative Producer Peter to talk about the legacy of Asians in Our Town. To watch that interview, click here. And be sure to tune in to the stream of NAATCO’s Our Town on May 19th!

PRIMETIME THEATER FESTIVAL - APRIL 2021

Theater and TV will meet in a raucous evening of new sitcom-inspired zoom plays by emerging theater-makers. Primetime Theater is a three-week theatrical event featuring brand new plays in the style of classic network sitcoms, presented over Zoom over the course of three weeks in April at 8pm/7 Central. This new virtual festival provides early to mid-career artists a chance to collaborate on funny, fast-paced episodic plays, written in an abbreviated writers' room setting. Audience members will be invited to keep their audio on at a lowered level throughout the performance for audible laughter and reactions. Miranda will be directing all three episodes of Writer’s Retreat, created by Nina Ki, Paris Crayton III, and Rosie Narasaki.

With a $50,000 prize on the line, the stakes were already high at this remote Writer's Retreat-and that was before the body showed up. Old rivalries, simmering secrets, and faded Hollywood starlets come out to play when this retreat's snowy cabin becomes the site of a deadly crime. Florence, Sunny, and Detroit will need to keep their enemies close (and their ex-lovers closer) if they want to make it out of this weekend alive!

2020 Van Lier fellow presentation - January 2021

After eight months as the 2020 Van Lier Fellow in Theater with the Asian American Arts Alliance (A4), Miranda will present parts of her cumulative project in a live Zoom presentation. She will share research, bits of a new theatrical piece, and will facilitate a roundtable discussion with early-career Japanese heritage theater-makers, Haley Sakamoto, Sam Hamashima, and Terry Kitagawa, asking the question “what makes Our Town ours?

After Executive Order 9066 was enacted in February of 1942, nearly 120,000 people of Japanese descent were forcefully relocated into concentration camps. Over a year later, in the Central Utah “Relocation Center,” more commonly known as Topaz, a group of Nisei high school students performed Thorton Wilder’s Our Town in the camp dining hall under the direction of their white, Mormon drama teacher. What did the quintessential American play look like in such an un-American (or uber-American) place? How did their own lived experiences of growing up Japanese during the dawning of World War II and incarceration inform how they interacted with the play’s themes of community, mortality, and companionship? Was it a transformative experience of resistance or, for some, was it just a school play?

The Potluck Plays: a digital feast for a4 - October 2020

For its first virtual benefit, A4 has commissioned Miranda (2020 Van Lier fellow) and the 2016 Van Lier fellow, Seonjae Kim, to create a one-time only, interactive series of interconnected plays centered around food and community. The plays will feature performances by Amy Hill, Purva Bedi, Megan Masako Haley, Maekalah Ratsabout, and Jason Tam. Miranda, Seonjae, and A4 partnered with illustrator Felicia Liang to create one-of-a-kind art pieces for attendees based on the plays.

roundabout directors group, cohort 2 - 2020-2022

Miranda is honored to have been invited to join the 2nd cohort of the Roundabout Directors Group with an amazing crew of fellow directors.

The Roundabout Directors Group was created to offer resources and provide career assistance to early-career directors for the American Theatre who have traditionally been denied equitable opportunities in the theatre industry. Building on the work begun through the Roundabout Directing Fellowship, the group will create artistic community for directors at similar stages of their careers, fostering camaraderie, lateral mentorship, access to expanded professional networks, and insight into the workings of a large not-for-profit institution.

2020 A4 Van Lier Fellow in Theater - May 2020 to January 2021

Very grateful to share a bit of good news amidst everything going on right now. Thank you to the Asian American Arts Alliance, the New York Community Trust, and the panelists for this opportunity. In the words of the great Sandra Oh, "it's an honor just to be Asian."

"We are honored to administer the Van Lier Fellowship on behalf of the New York Community Trust and are incredibly grateful to have the opportunity to recognize such an outstanding Asian American artist. From starting her own theater company at age 16 to her recent directorial accomplishments, Miranda demonstrates the community leadership that will undoubtedly make a significant contribution to the field and will make an excellent addition to the distinguished list of Van Lier Fellowship recipients. Coupled with her intellectual, relevant, and unique voice, we know she has an incredibly bright future in the theater world. We look forward to supporting and engaging with her and her work for a long time to come." - Lisa J. Gold, Executive Director, A4

The full press release with comments from the panelists can be found here.

Pocket universe’s Julius caesar in the NYTimes - July 2017

Pocket Universe’s Julius Caesar was featured in “When Women Won’t Accept Theatrical Manspreading” by Laura Collins-Hughes. Miranda played Casca in this genius re-imagining conceived by Alyssa May Gold and directed by Katie Young.

The capacity to take women seriously is at the heart of all of this: the idea that we’re not an aberration but half the population, and just as human as the other half. It is ridiculous to me that the need for equal footing even has to be a discussion — that the inherent value of a theater that looks and sounds and feels like all of us should require defending.

Semicolon Theatre named ‘women to watch’ by the interval - september 2016

Miranda and theatrical partner-in-crime, Zoe Kamil, were named ‘Women to Watch’ by the Interval, alongside visionary directors, designers, playwrights, and producers.

Despite the dearth of women writing, directing, and designing on Broadway, there are a lot of fabulous women making theatre and changing the theatrical landscape beyond the Great White Way. We asked women who had been featured on The Interval, and those in the know in the theatre community, to recommend emerging female theatre artists who they’re excited by and who deserve more exposure and support. So here are 16 female writers, directors, designers, and producers who the theatre community should be watching… - The Interval