What did you do during the pandemic? Bake oatmeal banana bread? Watch Netflix? Hand-sew thousands of masks for compromised populations?
If you chose option 3, then you need to see “Kristina Wong: Sweatshop Overlord,” a dazzling one-woman show about a serious subject: preventing the spread of Covid-19.
Before March 2020, KW, an LA-based performance artist, was in the midst of writing a one-woman show about politics. Unfortunately, the show was shelved when the theater world went dark. Rather than sit idle and wring her hands, she decided to put them to use with a talent she had learned as a young Asian-American child: sewing.
When her initial mask-sewing efforts were picked up by local media, KW’s story went viral. Everyone wanted a hand-sewn mask—and not just one mask, but thousands. Realizing she couldn’t make them all by herself, she created a network of “Aunties” across the country—both Asian and non-Asian American women who volunteered their time and skill to sewing masks. Soon it became an industry, and she sarcastically referred to herself as “sweatshop overlord” (hence the ironic play title) as her volunteers were unpaid.
What makes this play extraordinary (and not preachy) are KW’s self-deprecating humor and energy. She leaps and bounds across the stage, often clad in a warrior outfit, as she is engaged in “hand-to-hand combat” with the virus—and anti-maskers. The play also connects the dots between her efforts and the political events of the recent past: the 2020 election, the 1/6 insurrection, and the nonsensical arguments of the anti-vaxxers.
This September, when the government began mandating vaccines and taking a more active role in mask production, KW formally disbanded her army of “Aunties.” But while that effort has ended, her legend lives on at New York Theater Workshop. So go. And see how one extraordinary—and extraordinarily funny woman—really did make a difference.