6:00 PM // Rehearsal Hall A – Third Floor
By Stefani Kuo, David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University
Directed by Ibi Owolabi
Alliance Theatre presents FINAL BOARDING CALL, one of four free, staged readings during the 2025 Alliance/Kendeda Week.
Final Boarding Call tells the stories of the most recent, and now silenced, Hong Kong protests. The play revolves around the interconnected stories of seven characters whose backgrounds and perspectives run the spectrum – a protesting brother and flight attendant sister struggling to keep her job; a Mainland Chinese mother and her estranged Hong Kong daughter; a non-Cantonese-speaking reporter and her Indian partner; and an American expat CEO and Hong Kong lover living in the shadows. The play begins and ends with a flight, an entrance into the Hong Kong protests, and how the politics we see on the news every day affects the citizens of Hong Kong in their day-to-day lives. It gives the audience a window into China’s grip on global capitalism. How far will they go to fight for family, freedom, and the right to be heard?
BIOS
Stefani Kuo 郭佳怡 (she/her) is a poet/playwright/performer from Hong Kong and Taiwan. She received her B.A. from Yale University and her M.F.A. Candidate in Playwriting from the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale.
Fluent in Cantonese, Mandarin, French, and English, she is interested in crafting multicultural, multilingual narratives for an international audience. She has been an awardee of a MacDowell Fellowship, Jerome Fellowship at PWC, Dramatist Guild Fellowship, finalist for the National Playwrights Conference, Playwrights Realm Fellowship, Jerome Fellowship at Lanesboro Arts Centre, Many Voices Fellowship at PWC, Van Lier New Voices Fellowship. She is currently under commission with the Atlantic Theater Company, Ensemble Studio Theater, and has received commissions from Rubin Museum, Roundhouse Theater, and Yangtze Repertory.
Final Boarding Call was the winner of the 2021 Lead Ryan Fund for Emerging Women Writers’ Prize. Her play Wake was presented as part of the Langston Hughes Festival 2022 at Yale. Her play Pearl’s Beauty Salon was produced in May 2024 as part of the Carlotta Festival at Yale. She is currently a member of Young Blood, EST’s Writers group, and was a member of Interstate-73, Page 73’s Writers Group, in 2019. Her work in creative non-fiction, poetry, and translation have appeared in The New York Times, China Hands, Electric Literature, and more. As a performer, she was most recently seen in Arlington by Enda Walsh, directed by Bobbin Ramsey, as well as her one-woman show Moonie at the Yale Cabaret. stefanikuo.com // For more on Hong Kong parachute.substack.com
Ibi Owolabi is a recent alum of Drama League Stage Directing Fellowship, with a residency at Manhattan Theatre Club that led to her recent Broadway debut as the AD on Cost of Living. Her work has been seen at 7 Stages, Kenny Leon's True Colors Theatre, Alliance Theatre, Theatre Emory, The Weird Sisters Theatre Project, and the DC Black Theatre Festival. Ibi is a graduate of Georgia Southern University, the Actors Express directing internship, and the Kenny Leon fellowship. Ibi's recent productions include Intimate Apparel at Actor's Express, the world premiere of Good Bad People at True Colors’ Theatre, The Light at University of South Carolina, and Poof! with The Keen Company.
