Many thanks to the numerous theaters and institutions that have aided me in the development of this play: 3LD Arts & Technology Center, Ensemble Studio Theater, New York Theatre Workshop, The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the Next Wave Program at Melbourne Theatre Company.I have a lot of people to thank for the Mandarin text. Enormous credit is due to Lucia Xiaoran Zhu, Jing Dong, Ruoxin Xu, Xingying Peng, Doug Honoref and Alice Qin, who have all provided Mandarin translations for this play. Much of the Mandarin text is also the result of collaborating with Mandarin-speaking actors in the room, so thanks to Fang Du, Michael C Liu, Lya Yanne, Esther Chen, Xiao Quan, Rebecca Wei Hsieh and the extraordinary actors in our MTC production.
I’m similarly indebted to the dramaturgs and directors who have lent their brains to Golden Shield: my collaborators Nana Dakin and Lucy Powis; Chris Mead at MTC; and Graeme Gillis and Linsay Firman at Ensemble Studio Theater. Director Sarah Goodes has staged a beautiful world premiere of Golden Shield, and I’m so grateful to her for lending her creative vision, and for staying sane through my constant rewrites. And thanks to my agent Jean Mostyn for working tirelessly to make sure my plays are blessed with wonderful productions.
Thanks to my family and friends: the brilliant (and slightly mad) scientists, software engineers, academics, artists and lawyers in my life. Most of all, thanks to my sister and m’coll. AN King, for sifting through innumerable drafts of this play and telling me when I got the legal stuff wrong. Mercifully, our relationship is much better than that of the sisters in this play.