In mid-March 2020, performance artist-playwright Kristina Wong was midway through the second live show of a national tour when all of the students in the college auditorium where she was performing received a simultaneous text that the campus would shut down the next day due to COVID-19.
With the tour canceled and all theaters closed, Wong found herself quarantined in her L.A. Koreatown apartment with nothing to do but watch and read the news about the fast-growing pandemic. Then a friend tagged Wong on a social media post about how local hospitals were in need of face masks and she found a way to become an essential worker.
"The curse of the artist is that when push comes to shove, no one wants to watch your play," she said. "But I sewed my own set pieces and props and I'd sewn myself a big vagina costume. I never imagined these skills could help anyone."
