Theater Mu and New Native Theatre Announce MU TANG CLAN Vol 3 Playwright Cohort

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Pauline Moll, Keng Xiong, Dexieng Yang, and Elena Yazzie join the Twin Cities-based incubator.

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Theater Mu has announced the four playwrights accepted into the Mu Tang Clan Volume 3, its paid playwrights incubator supporting local and early-career Asian and Native American Playwrights in partnership with New Native Theatre . Vol 3 members Pauline Moll, Keng Xiong, Dexieng Yang, and Elena Yazzie will spend four months creating a new, full-length script under the mentorship of co-facilitators Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay, Mu's Mellon Foundation playwright-in-residence and Mu Tang Clan program designer, and Rhiana Yazzie, New Native Theatre 's founding artistic director.

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“Artists from the Asian diaspora and First Nations communities have always shaped the American cultural landscape, and this program is about investing directly in storytellers whose voices are often ignored or asked to quiet down or asked to consider others outside of our communities,” says Duangphouxay Vongsay. “We're creating some of the most urgent, imaginative, transformative, rib-jabbing work right now.”

Rhiana Yazzie adds, “Developing new plays is a particular joy of mine, I can't wait to work with such an exciting group of artists!”

The incubator was created in 2020 by Duangphouxay Vongsay, in partnership with Mu, in response to the ongoing underrepresentation of Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander stories on American stages. Designed deliberately as a shared learning environment, the program first focused on mid-career playwrights nationwide. Vol 2 (2023/24) centered on local, emerging playwrights who identify as refugees or descendants of refugees. This year, New Native Theatre 's partnership gives the playwrights of Vol 3 a chance to explore intersectionality more deeply in their identities and writing practices.

“Theater Mu and New Native Theatre believe that intentional incubators like this encourage and empower writers to take creative risks while also deepening their craft, all within a cohort that supports and challenges them,” says Fran de Leon , artistic director of Theater Mu. “Our companies were created because we wanted to tell stories on our own terms.”

Pauline Moll, Keng Xiong, Dexieng Yang, and Elena Yazzie have worked with various arts organizations in the Twin Cities, but the Mu Tang Clan Vol 3 aligns with each of their career goals. For some, its structure provided accountability and a way to forge sustainable writing practices. Others touched on how some of their best script breakthroughs have been through conversation and workshops, or how examining shared and differing experiences in a safe space will help them see their own work more clearly. Simply having a close-knit community to tackle challenges with and celebrate with makes playwriting less solitary and more fruitful. And, perhaps most practically, all four recognize how having financially supported time to work on their craft is invaluable as an emerging playwright.

In addition to the cohort support, Duangphouxay Vongsay, Rhiana Yazzie, and de Leon will facilitate further connections to the Twin Cities theater community. Before the program ends, playwrights will also be matched with a dramaturg to help develop and prepare their script for the next step toward a world premiere.

The Mu Tang Clan Vol 3 is supported by the Jerome Foundation , whose primary mission is to support early-career generative artists, creators, and culture bearers residing in Minnesota and the five boroughs of New York City. The Playwrights' Center has given each cohort member a year-long membership, and the playwrights are also able to attend shows thanks to several of the Twin Cities' vibrant theater companies.

Please contact Lianna McLernon at lianna@theatermu.org or (612) 709-3324 for requests such as interviews or additional assets. View the press kit.

PAULINE MOLL (she/her, ella) is a community artist whose work connects us to our bodies, our stories, and each other. Her play temporary tattoo won the Horizon Theatre Young Playwrights Festival Contest in 2018. Pauline is an alum of Transformational Creative Strategies Training, the Heart of It Writing Retreat, and Up with People. She has taught theater and dance classes for many different people around the world, including co-teaching devising at Theater Mu in 2023. Pauline lives on Dakota land.

KENG XIONG (he/him) is a Hmong American poet and storyteller based in Minnesota. He graduated from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, with a bachelor of arts in English and bachelor of individualized studies in Asian American studies, creative writing, and leadership. His artistic work focuses on navigating the complexities of Southeast Asian voices and queer identities through poetry, in addition to theater and film. He remembers first writing to capture the oral nature of Hmong song poetry, or kwv txhiaj. Ever since, he has continued to write and publish poetry in places such as Electric Literature, Hmong American Ink and Stories, and the Midwest Review. He has also worked and performed with the Southeast Asian Diaspora Project, Exposed Brick Theatre, Theater Mu, and Mamá Papaya, in the Twin Cities. As an artist, he leads with love and curiosity, and looks forward to engaging and uplifting underrepresented communities and stories.

DEXIENG YANG (she/her) is a Hmong American actor and emerging playwright located in the Twin Cities, MN area. Dexieng has worked with Theater Mu as an actor in The Korean Drama Addict's Guide To Losing Your Virginity, The Last Firefly, Man of God, and Again. Her other works include Good Kids at the MN Fringe Festival, Neighbors at History Theatre, Shul at Six Points, Mercutio Loves Romeo Loves Juliet Loves at the William Inge Festival, Sounds Inside at Red Eye Theater, The Humans at Park Square Theatre, and Sixpack at the Jungle Theater. She is a recurring cast member of the Island of Discarded Women podcast. She has showcased her one act Searching with SEA Echoes and Exposed Brick Theatre, as well as her 10-minute play In Between The Words Unspoken with SEA Echoes and Theater Mu.

ELENA YAZZIE (she/her) is a Navajo actress and emerging playwright originally from Phoenix, AZ, now based in the Twin Cities. She has worked with New Native Theatre and Frank Theatre, where she has developed her voice as a performer. With a background in acting, she is now expanding into playwriting, bringing her personal storytelling style to the page. She is currently developing her first play, with a focus on creating work that feels honest and connects with her community.

SAYMOUKDA DUANGPHOUXAY VONGSAY (she/her) is a Lao American poet, essayist, and playwright. Her work focuses on creating tools and spaces for the amplification of Southeast Asian refugee voices through poetry, theater, and experimental cultural production. The Smithsonian APAC, Theater Mu, Theatre Unbound, InterAct Theatre Co., and Mixed Blood Theatre have presented her plays. She has received fellowships from the Bush Foundation, McKnight Foundation, Center for Cultural Power, Jerome Foundation, Playwrights' Center, among others. She has received grants from the Knight Foundation, Forecast Public Art, Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, MAP Fund, Andy Warhol Foundation, and dozens more. She is currently the Mellon Foundation playwright-in-residence at Theater Mu; a core writer at the Playwrights' Center; a Jerome Foundation AIR at Camargo Cassis, France; and a MN State Arts Board grantee. BA: English, UMN. MLS: public policy + arts and cultural leadership, UMN.

RHIANA YAZZIE (she/her) is a playwright, a director, TV writer, filmmaker, and a 2025 United States Artist Fellow. Rhiana wrote on AMC's Dark Winds seasons 2 & 3 and wrote, produced, and directed her debut feature film, A Winter Love, currently seen in mainstream and Indigenous film festivals globally. She is working on her second feature film, an adaptation of a play called Wounspaye Wankatya, A College Education. She is one of the few women to have written and directed a play for the Kennedy Center: The Other Children of the Sun, which debuted February 2025. A Navajo Nation citizen (Ta'neeszahnii dóó Táchii'nii), she is the artistic director of New Native Theatre , which she started in 2009 as a response to the lack of connection and professional opportunities between Twin Cities theaters and the Native community, and it is the recipient of a 2023 Headwaters Bush Prize for Social Justice. Honors include: Lanford Wilson and Steinberg Award, Bush Foundation leadership fellowship, Sally Ordway Award for Vision.

Theater Mu is the largest Asian American theater company in the Midwest. Founded in 1992, Theater Mu's continuing goal to celebrate and empower the Asian American community through theater is achieved through mainstage productions, emerging artist support, and educational outreach programs. Awarded the Cultural Treasure title by the Ford and McKnight foundations, Theater Mu is also a member of the Consortium of Asian American Theaters & Artists as well as a member of the Twin Cities Theatres of Color Coalition, Theatre Communications Group, Americans for the Arts, Minnesota Citizens for the Arts, and the National New Play Network. | theatermu.org

New Native Theatre (NNT) is a new way of looking at, thinking about, and staging Native American stories. Created in 2009 by playwright Rhiana Yazzie, NNT produces, commissions, and devises authentic Native American stories for the stage, which means NNT's artists are intricately connected to the concerns and voices of their communities. Since inception, NNT has created authentic and transformative plays and events through the lens of the Native American experience. Its focus is on nurturing and developing Native American artists. Its immediate gaze is on the 11 tribes in Minnesota and the urban Twin Cities Native community. NNT's plays are shorthand meant to be played for its most vital audiences, Native people, because when specific stories are made for Native community itself, they become undeniably powerful for the broader community too, no translations required. | newnativetheatre.org

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_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/minneapolis/article/Theater-Mu-and-New-Native-Theatre-Name-MU-TANG-CLAN-VOL-3-Playwright-Cohort-20260608)._