Horse Trade Theater Group in association with Direct Arts present a workshop production of BIG FLOWER EATER, a new play devised by Victoria Linchong, with assistance from Kim Chinh and Helen Kim. Exploring shamanism in three unique Asian cultures (Hmong, Korean and Taiwanese), BIG FLOWER EATER uniquely blends traditional Asian rituals with carnival illusions, reflecting Linchong’s background as a Taiwanese-American and a former performer at the Coney Island Sideshow.

In BIG FLOWER EATER, a young Taiwanese woman pastes her grandmother’s fortunes on her bathroom wall, setting off a host of otherworldly activity in her small Lower East Side lavatory. The ghost of her eccentric grandmother takes up residence in the ceiling causing a constant leak, while the lost soul of an epileptic Hmong girl finds comfort in the cool porcelain of the tub, which she often clogs. The mysterious malfunctions of the bathroom are finally explained with a visit from a Korean friend, whose disturbing receptivity to the spirits leads to a revelation regarding the long tradition of shamanism in her now-Christian family.
A native New Yorker, Linchong ran away from her traditional immigrant family as a teenager to live and work at Theater for the New City in the East Village. She spent a few months at Coney Island Sideshow in the early 1990s, where she posed on the bally with a 10-foot long Albino python, lit torches with her tongue and laid in a box while impresario Todd Robbins put twelve blades in it. The experience gave her an interest in grindshow and sideshow illusions, which will be reflected in the presentation of spirits in BIG FLOWER EATER. The workshop will explore the use of glass and mirrors (Pepper’s Ghost) and shadow play. Ultimately, the production will also use other traditional supernatural effects, including aerial work and forced perspective (Ames Room). 
The story of the play stems from Linchong’s discovery of a mysterious woven pouch after her grandmother died, which contained paper fortunes cast for several members of her family. Several of them were decades old and unique examples of both Chinese calligraphy and Taiwan’s distinctive pastiche of animistic, Taoist and Buddhist beliefs. On the suggestion of her boyfriend at the time, she pasted the fortunes on her bathroom wall, which then began to leak and fluctuate oddly between heat and cold, causing Linchong to joke that her grandmother was unhappy about the location of her fortunes. Linchong was inspired by two books on Asian shamanistic beliefs to develop the joke into a play:  The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman, in which an epileptic Hmong girl becomes the center of a struggle between the California medical establishment and her refugee family’s  traditional beliefs; and Comfort Woman by Nora Okja Keller, about a young girl’s troubled relationship with her mother, whose traumatic experience as a comfort woman during the Korean War has exacerbated her preternatural ability as a spiritual medium. 
Shamanism in Taiwanese, Korean and Hmong cultures share several characteristics. Rooted in animistic cultures that predate Chinese influence, the practice is often presided by women, who are called upon to fall into trances and channel spirits, whereupon they can predict the future, heal the sick and act as mediators between the earthly and spiritual world. In Taiwan, shamanism derives from the animistic beliefs of sixteen different aboriginal tribes on the island, which blended with Taoist and Buddhist beliefs of the Chinese settlers who in the 1600s. In Korea, shamanism is experiencing a resurgence after being discouraged and driven underground by Christian missionaries and Japanese colonizers, whereas the Hmong have adhered to their traditional practices despite their flight to refugee communities in California, Minnesota, Wisconsin and throughout the world in the wake of America’s defeat in the Vietnam War.

Victoria Linchong is a Taiwanese-American actress, writer, producer and director working in both theater and film.  As an actress, she most notably had a feature role in the Obie Award play HOT KEYS (Naked Angels). Her producing credits include five plays by James Purdy, including SUN OF THE SLEEPLESS with Laurence Fishburne, and the Obie Award winning anti-war event STOP THE WAR: A FESTIVAL FOR PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST. More recently, Victoria produced, directed and acted in PAPER ANGELS by Genny Lim, which workshopped in New York City and traveled to San Francisco, where it played to capacity crowds outdoors in Chinatown and won Best of the San Francisco Fringe. She is currently in post-production on ALMOST HOME: TAIWAN, a documentary on Taiwan’s identity and independence.  Victoria studied acting with the legendary Sanford Meisner and at the British American Drama Academy at Oxford University in England. She was Development Assistant at Film Forum and is currently Grants Manager at Theatre for a New Audience.