The Team

Get to know the awesome cast members, creative and production teams!

The Play & the Playwright

I Dream of Chang and Eng: the Play Preface by the author I DREAM OF CHANG AND ENG is a…

Notes from the Director & the Dramaturg

Director’s Notes Ricardo Rocha Our play within a play concept of Philip Gotanda’s I Dream of Chang and Eng invites…

Historical Context

Historical Timeline (Chang and Eng in the context of American and Asian American history, and Sino-American relations)

Conjoined Twins & Bound Feet: Performative Medical Discourse and Voyeurism

Nineteeth-century America was characterized by its great curiosity–the desire to see and to know was a major driving force behind different disciplines…

Asian American & Asian American Theatre

Asian American Theatre Companies East West Players (CA) Asian American Theatre Company (CA) Asian American Repertory Theatre (CA) Ma-Yi Theatre…

Chinese Theatre & Chinese Theatre in America

Traditional Chinese Theatre Known as “Chinese opera” in the West, traditional Chinese theatre combines stylized singing and dancing, codified movement,…

Chingchong vs. Operatic China (Acoustics)

Find out how “Chinese” sound to the 19th-century Americans.

Characters

Chang and Eng Chang and Eng Bunker (1811-1874) were conjoined twins, the original “Siamese Twins.” They were born in Siam…

Siamese, Chinese/Chinaman, Americanese

This section mainly deals with racial and cultural concepts and imaginations of Chinese and Siamese in nineteenth-century America. The American…

Chinoiserie vs. John Chinaman (visuality)

The “Orientals” in the 19th century existed in two (almost opposite) Western imaginations: Chinoiserie and John Chinaman.