Fest Fast Facts

• Soft Magical Tofu Boy(s) was born from my desire to write a show that contends and interrogates the narratives we absorb and perpetuate as we grow up. While this piece is fictional, it is heavily inspired by my childhood as a hyper imaginative, queer, and closeted Chinese-Canadian ‘soft tofu boy’ in a suburb north of Toronto.
• I obtained my law degree, passed the bar and practiced law at a not-for-profit legal clinic in downtown Toronto. I provided legal services to people in precarious position son legal issues including housing, social benefits, and immigration. Much like Kenneth does in this show, I discovered I starting to put up walls/armor as a coping mechanism to get through the emotional turmoil and intense workload of the job. After three years, I burned out, and ultimately quit law to pursue musical theatre writing full-time in 2013.
• Soft Magical Tofu Boy(s) was inspired by my deep love of the 90s and 2000s media I surrounded myself with as a child and teen. My artistic voice, from how I sing, to the melodic shapes and chord voicings I compose with, are all rooted in that music and media. The score is my love letter to the pop and R&B writers and producers of the late90s and early 00’s that influenced my musical voice: Mariah Carey, Janet Jackson, Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, David Foster, Babyface, Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins, Teddy Riley, Lauryn Hill, Walter Afanasieff, and Max Martin, as well as anime dub theme songs, mega musicals, and Alan Menken’s Disney scores.
• Soft Magical Tofu Boy(s) was commissioned by The Musical Stage Company in Toronto, Canada in 2023 with funding from the Aubrey and Marla Dan Fund for New Musicals, and was subsequently supported by the company with a series of workshops through 2023-2025. It was developed significantly over an intensive two-week period with the support of the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center as part of the 2024 National Music Theater Conference. It subsequently received the Dan School of Drama & Music Award for Musical Theatre from the Playwrights Guild of Canada in 2024.
• During the pandemic, as a way of staying connected to my artistic voice, I started streaming music live on the streaming service Twitch.tv weekly, and am still streaming regularly 4 years later. My streams are a mix of acoustic covers, originals, live looping/building accompaniment tracks on Ableton, and more embarrassing musical improv than I dare admit. Learning to live loop on Ableton allowed me to find a new way to access creative flow state, and was how I created about a third of the Soft Magical Tofu Boy(s) score.
• I am hoping to meet interested theatre companies and producers who might be interested in partnering to take this show to a first developmental production, through to subsequent and additional development and productions into the future. I think the show offers really exciting choreographic and design possibilities. I would also love to release a concept album for this show in the near future.