Award-winning actor, director, and educator Bi Jean Ngo joins the Bi-Co Theater Program as a guest lecturer for the spring 2021 semester, teaching Fundamentals of Acting. Ngo challenges students in the introductory studio course to be as “authentic as possible under imaginary circumstances,” focusing “on the details of a memory, on the physical feelings that manifest when we remember those details, on the characters' big dreams and the underlying reasons they desire them, and on what they do to get what they want.”
In February, Ngo gave "a bravura performance" as Mary in Theatre Exile’s virtual worldwide debut of Sin Eaters written by Anna Moench, a satire that examines the human experience through social media. The New York Times noted Sin Eaters' "paranoid, unsettling vibes and satirical barbs," while The Philadelphia Inquirer praised it as “a pitch-perfect noir." Ngo's collaboration with Princeton's McCarter Theatre also launched in February, with her role in "Is She a Spirit" in The Maniac Monologues, a digital interactive performance based on real-life recounts of experiences with mental illness. Currently, Ngo is co-creating The Way I Walk—set to open in April at 1812 Productions—with Jen Childs, Tanquil Márquez, and fellow Bryn Mawr College lecturer Melanie Cotton, who leads the Dance Program's Hip Hop Ensemble.
Ngo earned her master of fine arts degree in acting at The New School University and trained at the Suzuki Company of Toga, Shakespeare & Company, and Dell’arte International. She is the recipient of the F. Otto Haas Emerging Artist Barrymore Award and is a founding member of Philadelphia Asian Performing Artists. Her credits include directing Delaware Shakespeare’s production of Much Ado About Nothing, acting in Overture Films’ Law Abiding Citizen, and onstage roles at Philadelphia-based companies including InterAct Theatre, Arden Theatre, and The Walnut Street Theatre.
To learn more about the Theater Program, contact Professor and Director of Theater Mark Lord at mlord@brynmawr.edu or theater@brynmawr.edu.
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