Adjunct Associate Professor of Writing Jeremy Tiang won the Obie Award for Outstanding New Play last week. Tiang won the prize recognizing Off- and Off-Off Broadway productions for their play Salesman之死. Salesman之死 is their second play.
Salesman之死 retells the story of Arthur Miller staging Death of a Salesman with an all-Chinese cast in 1983 Beijing. The play centers on Shen Huihui, Miller’s interpreter at the Beijing People’s Art Theatre. Recently out of the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese cast has never encountered a salesman. This impossible translation sparks a gripping story about cultural confusion and unexpected encounters.
之死, pronounced zhīsǐ, means “death of” and completes the classic title. The title’s bilingual stance continues throughout the play, which is performed in English and Mandarin with subtitles projected onto the stage in both languages.
Salesman 之死 debuted at the Off-Broadway venue Connelly Theatre in 2023 and was most recently staged at the Yangtze Repertory Theatre, off Canal Street in Chinatown. Yangtze Repertory has produced theatre by, for and about the AAPI community since 1992. The initial run featured Annie Jin Wang ’20 as the production’s dramaturg and Yining Cao ’25 as the show’s producing associate.
Tiang joined the Writing program as faculty in 2021 and has won numerous awards for their novels and translations, including the International Booker Prize, PEN Translates Award and the Singapore Literature Prize. Raised in Singapore, they now live in Flushing, Queens.
