Founded in 1989, Ma-Yi Theater Company is a professional, award-winning not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization whose primary mission is to develop and produce new and innovative plays by Asian American writers. Since its founding, Ma-Yi has distinguished itself as one of the country’s leading incubators of new works shaping local and national conversations about what it means to be Asian American today.

Central to Ma-Yi’s mission are challenging popular perceptions for culturally specific theater, and encouraging artists to push Asian American theater beyond easily identifiable markers. To that end, Ma-Yi provides a nurturing home for exciting, generative, contemporary playwrights to produce risky, challenging, forward-thinking new plays for American Theater.

Onstage and off, Ma-Yi is guided by knowing why and for whom we create. Ma-Yi aspires to exemplify the extent to which theater makers can be active local partners to the diverse communities that inspire them, while also participating in larger, global conversations about our roles as artists/citizens.

Our History

Ma-Yi Theater Company was founded in 1989 for the production and development of new plays and performance work discussing and engaging with the Filipino American experience.

In 1998, responding to the growing need for a developmental venue for Pan-Asian American texts, Ma-Yi expanded its mission to include works by Asian American playwrights of all ethnicities and origins.

Its numerous acclaimed productions include Haruna Lee’s Suicide Forest, Jessica Hagedorn & Fabian Obispo’s Felix Starro, Mike Lew’s Teenage Dick and Bike America, Qui Nguyen’s The Inexplicable Redemption of Agent G and Soul Samurai (with Vampire Cowboys), and Hansol Jung’s Among The Dead. Other productions include: Rescue Me by Michi Barall, Lloyd Suh’s The Chinese Lady and Lonnie Carter’s The Romance of Magno Rubio.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ma-Yi pivoted to the creation and production of digital content from Asian American artists in order to keep members of the community employed – this endeavor was known as Ma-Yi Studios. Productions to come out of Ma-Yi Studios include short films like Sophocles in Staten Island and Vancouver (produced in association with Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival); short subjects like Pinoy Street Dancers and A Divergent War: Songs for the Pandemic; and digital readings of plays such as Clippy & Ms. U, Final Boarding Call (in association with WP Theater), ONCE UPON A (korean) TIME, My H8 Letter to the Gr8 American Theatre; and more.

Ma-Yi Theater Company’s works have won a total of 10 Obie Awards, 3 Lucille Lortel Awards, an Off-Broadway Alliance Award, a Richard Rodgers Award, a Drama Desk nomination for Best Play, numerous Henry Hewes Design Award nominations, and in May 2010, a special Drama Desk award for “more than two decades of excellence and for nurturing Asian American voices in stylistically varied and engaging theatre.”

Our Name

“Ma-Yi” is the term used by ancient Chinese traders to refer to a group of islands that is known today as the Philippines.

A document written sometime around 1318 and titled Wen Shiann Tung Kuo (A General Investigation of the Chinese Cultural Sources) contains a stray reference to the Philippines that dates back to 982 AD. The text reads: “There were traders of the country of MA-YI carrying merchandise to the coast of Canton in the seventh year of Tai-ping-shing-kuo.”

Another pre-Spanish source is the Tao-i-chih-lio (Description of the Barbarians of the Isles) by Wang Ta-yuan, dated 1349 AD, with the following reference to MA-YI: “The people boil seawater to make salt and ferment (molasses) to make liquor. The natural products are kapok, yellow beeswax, tortoise shell, betel nuts, and cloth of various patterns. The Chinese goods used in trading are cauldrons, pieces of iron, red cloth or taffetas of various color stripes, ivory, ‘tint’ (a Chinese silver coin) or the like.”

The company’s name was chosen in recognition of the vibrant culture that existed in Ma-Yi, prior to its colonization at the hands of the West.