CREATIVE TEAM BIOS

Jake Sung-Guk Sullivan (Director) - Jake Sung-Guk Sullivan is a director, actor, and educator from the Twin Cities metro area. Recent directing credits: [title of show] (Lyric Arts), Disney's The Little Mermaid (Lakeshore Players Theatre). Associate Director, Cambodian Rock Band (Theatre Mu / The Jungle Theatre). Upcoming projects: The Wedding Singer (Lyric Arts). He also leads classes in the Mu Explorations program, as well as serving as the Theatre Teacher at Breck School. A huge thank you to Jessica, Bao, Stages Theatre Company and Theatre Mu for creating this tale and bringing it to life on the page and stage.

Anh Thư T. Phạm (Cultural Consultant) - Anh Thư T. Phạm is Theater Mu's first Asian American managing director. A 1.5 generation refugee from Viet Nam, she has served on the boards of Pangea World Theater, Ananya Dance Theater, and the New Arab American Theater Works. A community activist and organizer at heart, she has been in a number of political organizations and was most recently a member of Rad Azns (Asian for Black Lives Matter) prior to starting her position at Theater Mu. Being a part of the team for A DIFFERENT POND is a dream come true. Seeing a Midwest Vietnamese-American story on stage is the sort of representation she could never have dreamed of.

BAO PHI (AUTHOR) - A two-time Minnesota Grand Slam champion and a National Poetry Slam finalist, Bao Phi has appeared on HBO Presents Russell Simmons Def Poetry, featured in the live performances and taping of the blockbuster diasporic Vietnamese variety show Paris By Night 114: Tôi Là Người Việt Nam, and a poem of his appeared in the 2006 Best American Poetry anthology. His poems and essays are widely published in numerous publications including Screaming Monkeys and Spoken Word Revolution Redux. A short story of his, Revolution Shuffle, appeared in the anthology Octavia’s Brood: Stories from Social Justice Movements, AK Press, 2015, and an essay of his was included in the anthology A Good Time for the Truth, edited by Sun Yung Shin, Minnesota Historical Society Press. He has two collections of poems, both published by Coffeehouse Press, Sông I Sing and Thousand Star Hotel, the latter of which was nominated for the Minnesota Book Award, named by NPR as one of the best books of 2017, and was chosen as 2017’s best poetry book of the year by San Francisco State’s Poetry Center. His first children’s book, A Different Pond, received six starred reviews and won multiple awards including a Caldecott Honor, an Ezra Jack Keats Honor, Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association award for best picture book, the Minnesota Book Award for picture books, and the Charlotte Zolotow Award for excellence in children’s book writing. It made several best books of the year lists, including Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, and Shelf Awareness. His second children’s book, My Footprints, was release by Capstone in 2019.

JESSICA LUU PELLETIER (PLAYWRIGHT) - Jessica Luu Pelletier (she/her) is a biracial Queer Vietnamese-American writer, performer, and theatre-maker, currently based in New York. Her work reflects a multi-cultural viewpoint, utilizing the stage as a means to explore liberation for the Other combined with the spectacle of heightened reality. In this practice, she seeks to take care of her communities while generating both joy and healing, embracing nuance in the complexity of lived experiences.