The Next Installment of...
The Last Supper Party

The Last Supper Party
An Evening of Poetry and Music with Shizue Seigel, Frank Abe and Cole Sass curated by Kimi Sugioka and presented in collaboration with Theatre of Yugen's NOHSpace and the US/Japan Cultural Trade Network.

We invite our audience to share ideas and bread and find inspiration in the thoughts and words of artists and writers whose perspectives are drawn from a kaleidoscope of cultures, but who are united by compassion and a common desire to seek justice, equity and truth.

Artist Biographies
Shizue Seigel (Poet)
Shizue Seigel is a Japanese American writer, visual artist and community activist based in San Francisco. As founder/director of Write Now! SF Bay, she has supported 500+ writers and artists of color since 2015 through workshops, readings and publications. Shizue will be reading from her new poetry collection about relationship across class, race, generation and religion, Courting A Man Who Doesn’t Talk.

Frank Abe (Author)
Frank Abe is lead author of the graphic novel, We Hereby Refuse: Japanese American Resistance to Wartime Incarceration, and co-editor with Floyd Cheung of the Penguin Classics anthology of The Literature of Japanese American Incarceration  He is co-editor and author of John Okada: The Life & Rediscovered Work of the Author of No-No Boy, and wrote and directed the award-winning PBS documentary Conscience and the Constitution. He is featured in the podcast, Rachel Maddow Presents Burn Order, and is currently developing a new stage adaptation of Okada’s No-No Boy. He blogs at Resisters.com

Cole Sass (Shakuhachi)
Cole Sass draws on a dual background in both shakuhachi and orchestral music that result in compositions that largely focus on the natural integration of shakuhachi playing into popular music genres, especially those featuring piano, string ensembles, and guitar. For performances he explores contemporary music written for the shakuhachi. As a lecturer, Cole sheds light on concepts known only within the Japanese musical world, hoping to inspire future generations of composers and players to pursue this wonderful instrument.

Kimi Sugioka (Curator)
Kimi Sugioka is a poet, songwriter, and educator. She is the current Poet Laureate for the City of Alameda, a post that includes creating platforms for the presentation of a diverse variety of poets and spoken-word artists. Kimi also performs her own work frequently throughout the Bay Area. Born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and raised in Berkeley, California, Kimi has worked in public education for decades, and earned her BA from San Francisco State University and MFA from the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

The Last Supper Party Performance Series
The Last Supper Party is a monthly spoken word and music performance series inspired by Fe Bongolan’s landmark painting of the same name; a 200 sq. ft. canvas that covered one wall of our office when we were housed on Sutter Street during the COVID-19 pandemic.The Last Supper Party presents the voices of diverse artists and writers. We invite our audience to share ideas and find inspiration in the thoughts and words of artists whose perspectives are drawn from a kaleidoscope of cultures. But who are united by compassion and a common desire to seek justice, equity and truth.On even months (October, December, February and April) The Last Supper Party will be part of the Mission Arts Performance Project (MAPP).

The Story of The Last Supper Party Painting
“1985. Ronald Reagan was still President. The global movement to end apartheid and free Nelson Mandela from Robben Island Prison was underway. In San Francisco homelessness was ramping up. The AIDS pandemic was taking down swaths of our city’s population: friends, family, and co-workers. Yet a whole other world of class and wealth did nothing while the rest of our world was in trouble. Sitting in my studio in an Inverness cabin, I stayed with my paints and let something happen. It was there that I found my artist’s voice to not attack directly, but to let the exposure of that apathy – bred by a society that embraced greed over humanity—do the work.

Forty plus years later, with all that has changed and not changed, it is painfully unsurprising that this painting still shouts.”~ Fe Bongolan

Fe Bongolan (Creator of The Last Supper Party Painting)
Fe Bongolan is a Bay Area visual and performing artist. She is an alumnae of San Francisco State University with a Bachelor’s degree in Crafts and Design. She found theater arts in her last year at SFSU, and to this day it consumes her life. After working as an actress with Asian American Theater Company and Teatro Campesino, in 1992 she began work with the Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women, immediately involved as an artist from the community working alongside Rhodessa Jones in helping women inmates from San Francisco County Jail write their stories for performance. In 28 years with the Medea Project, Fe developed as actor, writer, dramaturge and assistant director to Rhodessa, helping inmates and ex-offenders find their voice and develop their writing for performance in jail, the community and main stage.