Photo by Ken Yotsukura Photography

Originally from Jilin City, China, Alison Yueming Qu (she/they) is a Chinese American Theatre Producer, Dramaturg, Director, and Community Organizer. Alison curates joyful, transformative, and radical Asian American spaces through the power of arts and culture. Alison was named by WBUR (Boston’s NPR station) as a 2023 ARTery Maker—emerging artists of color shaping the culture and arts landscape in Greater Boston. 

Alison is the Executive Director of CHUANG Stage—Boston’s Asian American theatre company pioneering a translingual, immigrant community-centric activism in the arts. CHUANG Stage is a LaunchPad Resident Theater of the historic Boston Center for the Arts with a year-round two-show season, plus “Found in Translation”, a multilingual play reading series transforming Boston Chinatown. CHUANG Stage’s sister community, CHUANG Lab@Emerson, is a pipeline theatre education program at Emerson College for international students from China. Find out more about CHUANG Stage at chuangstage.org.

Theater producer, director and dramaturg Alison Qu is executive director of CHUANG Stage in Boston. (Robin Lubbock/WBUR)

Alison is the Associate Producer of HowlRound Theatre Commons/Emerson College Office of the Arts, administering projects including the Mellon Foundation National Playwright Residency Program and International Presenter Commons. Before this role, she served as the Connectivity Producer at Company One Theatre in Boston, MA, emerging from their previous role with C1 as the Associate Producer of the Boston Chinatown Musical project by Kit Yan & Melissa Li, which later evolved to become Chinatown Open Gates (Mass Humanities Mass Stories Grant Recipient). 

Their recent artistic endeavors include The Fortune Teller (CHUANG Stage & TC Squared Theatre Company), How I Disappeared (New Ohio Theater, Ice Factory 2023), Break, Break (Legion Theater Project), The Chinese Lady (Central Square Theater), Young Nerds of Color (Central Square Theater), Shrike (Fresh Ink Theater), We & Other Queer Goddexxes (Company One),  workshop reading of Ascend! by Amy Zhang (The Tank, 2021 NY City Artists Crops grant) and guest directing at NTI/O’Neill with Summer Theatermakers 2020. As a moderator and a speaker, they have also worked with Pao Arts Center, Asian American Playwrights Collective, Asian American Theater Artists of Boston, ArtsEmerson, The Huntington Theatre Company, and Guerilla Opera; they have also worked with HERE Arts Center, MIT Music & Theater Arts, TC Squared Theater Company, Design Studio for Social Intervention, the Boston Public Library, MassCreative and more. During their college years, their dramaturgy work for 10 Out of 12 by Anne Washburn (Emerson Stage) received the 2020 LMDA/Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival Region 1 Dramaturgy Award (Alison will be a Respondent of this award in 2023!) Alison was an EVVY Student Distinction Award recipient in 2020.

Photo by Ken Yotsukura Photography

Alison was the inaugural Cutler Creative Producing & Engagement Fellow at ArtsEmerson, where she worked on Parable of the Sower (Toshi Reagan, Eric Ting) and other projects. Other producing credits include The 24 Hour Plays: Nationals 2021, B·O·N·D International Virtual Performance Festival: Global Chinese Voices, a global celebration of new digital works that included 4 countries, 9 cities touring play-reading clubs. Audio immersive piece Imaginarium (Out of the Blue Theatre) at Applecarts Art and Georgetown Festival, curated with the help of the German-French Cultural Fund in Wuhan. They assistant-produced Season II of Artists Connectivity Series (Ping Pong Arts), an open dialogue series between art and community makers worldwide.

Alison and CHUANG Stage have received grants and residencies from MassCreative, The Barr Foundation, National Endowments of the Arts, The Boston Foundation, New England Foundation of the Arts, Boston Cultural Council, National Arts Strategies, Mass Cultural Council, Boston Center for the Arts, and Bank of America. They are a proud alumna of the National Theater Institute, the Harvard University/American Repertory Theater Arts & Cultural Organizational Management (ACOM) program, a board member of Boston Cultural Council, a steering committee member of API Arts Network, and an associate member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society. Alison graduated from Emerson College with a BFA in Theatre (Directing and Dramaturgy).

Alison lives in Boston, MA (the unceded land of Wampanoag and Nipmuc people) and occasionally Long Island City (Queens, NY - Lenape and Canarsie land) with three cats. They are an avid guitar player, a film photographer, and an unapologetic Swiftie with favorite album being Midnights. 

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