Mia Park is a Korean-American TV show host, actress, drummer, and yoga instructor in based in Chicago. She is the long-time host of the children's dance show Chic-a-Go-Go, and co-founder of Chicago's A-Squared Theatre Workshop.
Video Mia Park
Early life and education
Mia Chan Mi Park was born in Philadelphia. She attended Shimer College, graduating with distinction in 1995. Then located in Waukegan, Illinois and currently located in Chicago, Shimer is a Great Books college with a four-year core curriculum.
Maps Mia Park
Performance career
Park is the host of the Chicago underground children's show Chic-a-Go-Go, "a dance show for kids of all ages". Lonely Planet described the show as "a kiddie version of Soul Train." Reviews of the show frequently focus on Park's "deliriously chipper" style or "always-up rock-n-roll demeanor". She has hosted Chic-A-Go-Go since 1998. Her connection to Chic-a-Go-Go actually goes back to the very first show in 1996, when her then-boyfriend's band performed as the show's first musical guest, and she appeared as a dancer. Park, who typically moves rapidly from one project to another, has described the show as "the longest thing I've ever done in my life."
As the host (or co-host, as the host is nominally hosted by the rat puppet Ratso), Park interviews the guest musical groups after their performances. In a 2012 Chicago Reader feature, she complained about having missed the opportunity to interview Duran Duran due to a scheduling mixup; In August of the same year, however, Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran made good on their original promise.
A drummer and percussionist, Park began performing in bands in 1995. Many of the bands in which she performs are all-female and/or all-Asian, including Kim (which she described as a "pop-rock, punk-out, all-female Asian band") and Pook Nury (a Korean female drum group). As of 2012, she was a percussionist for the all-female pop orchestra Girl Group Chicago.
In 2001, she wrote of the challenges facing rock groups of this kind:
When I tell people that I am the drummer for an all-Asian American female rock band, I don't expect to be taken seriously. There aren't any other bands like Kim in Chicago, let along in america, so I don't expect the masses to comprehend that, YES, women rock, and that, YES, Asian American women also rock ... and we rock hard, dammit!
Park organizes an annual event of one-night-only female cover bands performing to benefit the homeless, called "Covers for Cover."
Park is a co-founder of Chicago's A-Squared Theatre Workshop, the city's only pan-Asian theater troupe. She conceived of and appeared in the company's highly successful 2012 production My Asian Mom, a series of eight short one-person plays by Asian performers about their mothers. Park's contribution, which dealt with her grandmother's escape from North Korea and also involved a lengthy handstand, attracted particular attention.
Filmography
- The Minx (2007), as Linnea Chiang
- At Last (2009)
- The Catastrophe (2011)
- Boss, season 1, recurring role as clinic volunteer
- The Lake House (2006), as receptionist
Other activities
Park has worked as a yoga instructor since 2006.
Works cited
- Park, Mia Chan Mi (2001). "Waving Fans". In Vickie Nam. Yell-Oh Girls!: Emerging Voices Explore Culture, Identity, and Growing Up Asian American. pp. 269-270. ISBN 0060959444.
References
External links
- Official site
- Mia Park on IMDb
Source of article : Wikipedia
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