Ada Cheng
Confinement

Ada Cheng is a Taiwanese artist living in USA. She describes herself as a wanderer who travels across borders to explore the shared and the different amongst humanity, a wonderer who loves to learn and grow out of curiosity for the world(s) beyond the immediate and the familiar. Ada is an artist of life, who creates from the heart despite the tyranny of gates and boundaries, ando who came to ´ace to work on the script of a theatre play about a Chinese family wrestling with safety under the context of global pandemic.

Since January 2016, Ada has been telling personal stories as a storyteller and has done two solo performances, Not Quite and Loving Across Borders, at theaters, universities, and conferences across the nation. Since 2017, she has worked with various community organizations and produced numerous storytelling shows amplifying BIPOC and queer voices. Since 2020, she has written and published short plays and monologues to tell community stories.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I have a distinct path to becoming and being an artist. I was a tenured professor in sociology at DePaul University in Chicago for 15 years before I resigned from my teaching position to pursue storytelling, performance, and theatre. I have chosen storytelling (in multiple genres and mediums) for self expression and for public engagement because it is a powerful tool in changing people’s heart and mind. Through storytelling, I have been able to take the audience through an emotionally journey that is also intellectually rigorous. My strength lies in social justice storytelling as well as politically engaged theatre and performance. I would like to continue to use storytelling, theatre, and performance arts to explore sociopolitical issues of our times, thus contributing to thoughtful and productive dialogues. I hope my work helps make the world a better place for all.