Can Kimberly Gettings be the next Korean-American (to be crowned Miss USA? Well, if the online poll on the Miss USA website is any indication, she may have a good shot of winning. Kimberly is currently ranked #2, behind Miss Utah in the glam photo poll, with an above average rating. Be sure to tune in next Sunday, April 19, 2009 to cheer her on. I agree with one of the poster(Young sic KIM) who commented "Very beautiful !!! Good luck to you !!! Kimberly Gittings Fighting!!!"

The first Korean-American to win Miss USA, was Brook Antoinette Mahealani Lee. Brook was Miss USA and Miss Hawaii USA prior to winning the Miss Universe 1997 pageant.

Tibits
* Belongs to the University of Georgia Air Force ROTC and dreams of being a physician in the United States Air Force someday.
* Comes from four generations of Air Force.
* Wants to deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan.
* Working towards a degree in biology and speech communication at the University of Georgia.
* Overcame an eating disorder as a teen and now works with the National Eating Disorder Association to help others overcome their own personal battles.

Visit Website: Miss USA

MISS USA 2009 comes to Las Vegas for a night of glamour in search of the most beautiful woman in America. Access Hollywood anchor Billy Bush and NBC star Nadine Velazquez host this exciting LIVE event! Last year's winner, Miss Texas Crystal Stewart, will return to crown her successor. Each contestant will be judged in three categories: swimsuit, evening gown and interview.
(Article was updated, due to a correction)
Visit Website: Miss USA on NBC

It has been said that home is that place where when you knock on the door they have to let you in. “Come home.” These two words catapult into action Lloyd Suh’s world premiere comedy, American Hwangap, opening April 11 at San Francisco’s esteemed Magic Theatre (www.magictheatre.org). Previews begin April 4 and the play is slated to run through May 3.

Directed by noted Off-Broadway wunderkind Trip Cullman, American Hwangap makes fresh the homecoming structure with a heartbreaking Korean American experience set against a canvas of highway 80, desert, and mythic cowboy lore. As a recipient of the Lark Play Development Center’s “Launching New Plays into the Repertoire Initiative” supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, American Hwangap will follow its production at the Magic with performances at the Denver Center Theatre Company, Ma-Yi Theatre Company, The Play Company in New York, and Tanghalang Pilipino in the Philippines.

“The quirky family of American Hwangap is instantly and hauntingly familiar,” said Magic Artistic Director Loretta Greco who selected the play. “As Jodi Long, the Broadway wonder who plays Mary in our production, said to me, ‘this play is like Sam Shepard for Asian people.’ And she is right; the similarities are notable and very much a part of what drew me to this work. Suh explores the American Landscape — both the romance and price of super-sized American dreams — but as experienced by two generations of immigrants. Like Shepard, he is suspicious of urban types. Suh’s characters’ hearts reside in backyard trees, fishless waters, endless desert and mountains just beyond reach. The lure of American swagger is irresistible.”

American Hwangap tells the tales of a Korean immigrant who returns home to the United States 15 years after he abandons his family there. The momentous occasion is his 60th birthday. As the birthday celebration unfolds, his wife and three grown children expose the family’s troubled history and its promise for the future.

“Like Shepard’s first Pulitzer Prize winner, Buried Child, Suh’s American Hwangap is quintessentially a homecoming play,” Greco continues. “A man returns to find he is a stranger and insists on his own identity and rightful place in his family. Suh’s play, however, is a comedy: it manages miraculously to dissect both the poignancy and ridiculousness of the cultural collision that is Korea meets Texas; the task of assimilation; and the American social consciousness as seen through the lens of our most fertile and dysfunctional unit, the family.”

An apt student of history, Suh notes that the catalyst for American Hwangap was the 60th birthday of Korea in 2005 -- hwangap [pronounced hwon-gap] being the word for a 60th Birthday celebration and considered in Asian cultures to be especially significant as it is the day one has completed his or her zodiac cycle.

“Because of the division that still exists within the Korean peninsula, that celebration became a very different thing than it would have been had it been a unified Korea,” said Suh. “Had it been a unified Korea, it would have been a wonderful and celebratory moment. But it wasn’t what it otherwise would have been and I was very interested in that. From that seed came the notion behind American Hwangap -- of a fractured individual wanted to be whole in the same way that Reunification is a palpable yearning.”

In Korean culture hwangap is a family-run celebration in which sons and daughters demonstrate symbolically their devotion with wine and food. It can also mark, for those who seize it, an opportunity for moral reflection. Here lies one of the most enduring of Suh’s themes: the reminder that it is never too late to seek redemption — making things once broken, whole. However, American Hwangap’s creative team is quick to stress, that this is very much a comedic endeavor.

“This most definitely a funny play,” says Hwangap director Cullman. “We think the play will resonate with Korean Americans, and most especially young professionals who are the children or grandchildren of immigrants.”

The play’s creator concurs: “Oh, I just can’t write anything that isn’t gonna’ be funny,” Suh laughs. “It just isn’t worth it to me. I can’t even imagine a play without a joke…I honestly believe that things are funnier when they’re deeply felt, and when things are deeply felt, they’re felt even more deeply if there’s humor within that world as well.”

Video: Interview with Lloyd Suh

American Hwangap performs April 11 – May 9, 2009 (previews begin April 4) at Magic’s Northside Theatre (Bldg D, Fort Mason Center, San Francisco, CA – parking lot entrance at Marina Blvd. and Buchanan St.). Tickets are $25-$45 (with student, senior and educator $10 Rush Tickets available one-hour hour prior to curtain) and are available at (415) 441-8822 or www.magictheatre.org.

 

Kimberly Anne Gittings, a sophomore biology major from Lilburn and the daugther of Kim Yeong-shin, was crowned Miss Georgia USA 2009. Although Kimberly participated in state-wide pageants since the age of 15, she not your typical beauty queen. Case in point, after the she was crowned with the highest honor on the State level, she got up at 6 a.m. the following morning for physical training with the Air Force ROTC. "I am completely against the stereotype of a typical pageant person, I love extreme sports, I love to get down and dirty," Gittings said. "I do rock climbing, mountain biking [and] sky diving."

Read more: Kimberly Anne Gittings crowned Miss Georgia USA 2009

The international sensation Jump is slated to make its Off-Broadway bow in September at the Union Square Theatre. The production, created by Korea's Yegam Theater Company, will bring the martial arts comedy to American audiences after successful productions in Seoul, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Osaka, Macao, Malaysia, Madrid, Osaka, Isreal, London and Edinburgh.

Jump proved so successful in its 2003 Seoul debut that the production continues to play a sold-out run in downtown Seoul in a theatre built specifically to house the production. The 90-minute martial arts-based spectacle centers on a Korean family, including such characters as a drunken uncle and crotchety grandfather, who, according to press notes, "enjoy nothing more than challenging the rest of the family to martial arts showdowns. When two burglars break into the house occupied by three generations of highly trained martial artists, the family turns their expertise on the unexpected guests. The hyperactive sitcom that ensues is the ideal forum for this troupe to show off their extensive training in martial arts, acrobatics, gymnastics and comic acting."

Jump is similar in vein to Off-Broadway productions like Stomp, Slava's Snowshow and Blue Man Group in that the visual and physical elements of the production are used to tell the story rather than relying on language. Some have described the highly physical, family-friendly production as "Jackie Chan meets Charlie Chaplin."

Created by Choi Chul-ki, the producer of the Yegam Theater Company, Jump has undergone a bit of fine-tuning for Western audiences. David Ottone was brought in to clarify moments and adapt culture specific reference for broader audience appeal, while expanding some of the martial-arts fight scenes.

The New York creative team for Jump includes Tae-Young Kim (scenic design), DOLSILNAI, INC. (costumes), Jong-Wah Park, Sung-Bin Lim (lighting), Dong-June Lee (music), Gye-Hwan Park (martial arts choreography) and Pan Company (make-up design).

Jump will begin performances at the Union Square Theatre Sept. 25, with plans for productions in South America and a separate touring production shortly thereafter. In addition, productions of Jump are underway in Russia, China, Malaysia and Australia.

Tickets for the Off-Broadway production of Jump go on sale Aug. 1, and will be available by visiting www.ticketmaster.com or by calling (212) 307-4100.

Source: Playbill