Meifang takes her five-year-old daughter, Joni, to a park and recounts a story of when her father took her and her siblings to go see some monkeys during her childhood in Taiwan. Joni interrupts when bored and makes her mom give her boosts on the swing set. 

Twelve years later, Meifang makes preparations for the departure of her estranged father, who had come from overseas to visit. While trying to convince a teenage Joni to cancel plans with friends so she can spend more time with her grandfather, Meifang accidentally spills hot soup on her. Ouch. When Joni goes to change in her room, Meifang’s father chastises her for her parenting practices and implies that it is disrespectful of Joni to choose the banquet over her grandfather. 

Joni overhears the exchange and forces Meifang to choose: will Meifang keep her head down and continue listening to the men in her life, or will she stand up for her daughter and for herself? Will Joni be successful in her attempts to get through to mother, or will she grow frustrated and take the next train out of her small hometown?

East Bay, California. Fremont area. Suburbs. Multi-ethnic enclave. 

“I drove through the grids of cottonwood-lined streets in our Fremont neighborhood, where people who’d never shaken hands with kings lived in shabby, flat one-story houses with barred windows, where old cars like mine dripped oil on blacktop driveways. Pencil gray chain-link fences closed off the backyards in our neighborhood. Toys, bald tires, and beer bottles with peeling labels littered unkempt front lawns … ” - Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

Meifang is the eldest daughter of a retired soldier in Taiwan. She tries her best to afford her daughter the freedom that she was denied as a child, but often swings too far the other way.

Joni is Meifang’s daughter and only child. A track star. As a teenager, Joni pushes her mother’s boundaries almost instinctively. She's belligerent, perceptive, and has a strong sense of justice.

Ahgong is Hokkien for grandfather and what Joni calls Meifang’s father. An old veteran and a first-time visitor of the US, he ran his household with discipline and expects the same from his daughter.

Lloyd is Meifang’s husband and Joni’s absent-minded dad. He's a second-generation Asian American and a wee bit lazy.  

Very recently, my mom told me about a time when her father, an old and strict veteran, suddenly took her family on an outing to see some monkeys. On the way there, my mom accidentally missed the train that her whole family had boarded, and she chased after the train until her father took the next train back and found her. My mom said that she was scared and crying, and although I’ve seen my mother cry many times as an adult woman, frustrated at having to shoulder responsibilities as the matriarch of our dysfunctional family, I never thought of her as having once been just a kid, afraid of being separated from her loved ones.

“Monkey Park” is a wish, my little prayer for my mother and all immigrant mothers to nourish their inner children after neglecting them for so long to prioritize raising us. I’ll be taking inspiration from stories set in the NorCal suburbs like Lady Bird (2017) and Didi (2024), coming of age movies such as Juno (2007) and The Edge of Seventeen (2016), and the intergenerational aspects of Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022) and Saving Face (2004) in my attempt to complicate the portrayal of Asian mothers beyond stereotypical tiger mom representations. I often see depictions of close mother-daughter pairings within white families on screen (e.g., Lorelai and Rory Gilmore from Gilmore Girls or Donna and Sophie Sheridan from Mamma Mia), but most Asian mother-daughter relationships I’ve seen depicted are contemptuous or detached. I want to tell a story with Asian characters experiencing all the complexities of a loving mother-daughter relationship like my own. 



“Monkey Park” has received various accolades from screenwriting institutions:

• The script made it onto Coverfly's Red List in 2024;
• It was a Finalist for the Short Scripts category of Final Draft's Big Break Screenwriting Contest in 2024;
• It was among the top 20 ranked Short Drama projects on Coverfly for the month of November 2024;
• And it is in the overall top 3% of the discoverable projects on the Coverfly platform.

To bring our vision of Monkey Park to life, we need to raise a minimum production budget of $15,000. Your contributions will go directly towards compensation for our cast and crew, equipment rentals for our camera-lighting department, meals, transportation, production design, and post-production.

You can support our film by following and disseminating this campaign or tagging along our journey on Instagram:

• INSTAGRAM: @monkeyparkfilm

Our $15,000 goal is the absolute minimum we need to raise for this production.

• If we raise $18,000, we’ll be able to hire a hair and makeup artist and pay for nicer props, costumes, and set decorations. 
• If we raise $22,000, we’ll be able to rent an upgraded camera package and hire additional crew members.
• If we raise $24,000, we’ll be able to increase day rates for our cast and crew and pay for an original score.

• FEBRUARY 2025 - Audition process begins
• FEBRUARY 22nd 2025 - Callbacks begin
• MARCH 27th 2025 - Seed and Spark goes live
• APRIL 14th 2025 - Cast, crew, and locations locked
• MAY 2nd 2025 - Shot list, prop list, and costumes officially locked
• MAY 11th 2025 - Seed and Spark campaign ends. Final adjustments made.
• MAY 24th-26th - Production proceeds
• JUNE 2025 - Post-production begins

Sharon Shao (Meifang) (she/they) is a Bay Area-native actor, musician, and teaching artist. Local credits include Waitress (SF Playhouse), Far Country (Berkeley Rep), Chinglish (SF Playhouse), Sleeping Beauty (Panto in the Presidio), The Winter’s Tale, Good Person of Szechwan (CalShakes), The Paper Dreams of Harry Chin (SF Playhouse, *recipient of SFBATCC featured actress award), Man of God (Shotgun Players), Vinegar Tom (Shotgun Players), and The Tempest and Hamlet (Oakland Theater Project). They recently co-produced an original cabaret theater piece called “Sex, Camp, Rock ‘N Roll” at the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She received her B.A. in Theatre Arts and Psychology from UC Santa Cruz. Offstage, Sharon is passionate about teaching voice and drama to young artists, devising original work, and building creative communities here and abroad. IG: @shao_dynasty, sharonshao.biz

Sophia Wang (Joni), from Shenzhen, China, is a junior at Stanford University, studying Psychology, Human Biology, and Theatre acting. She has acted in high school productions of Peter Pan, Heathers, Once on This Island, and Aladdin, and university productions of Gaieties, Julius Caesar, and The Wolves. She is a board member of Theatre Lab, Stanford’s contemporary theatre organization. Outside of theatre, she is passionate about psychological interventions that address issues in education and social environments. She also loves language learning, wushu, and meeting new people from around the world!

Jeffrey Chang (Ahgong) is a retired finance professional in high tech and Evelyn’s uncle! He was born, raised, and educated in Taiwan. His parents are from Shanghai, China. Jeffrey is a first generation immigrant to the US, where he has spent the majority of his life. This is his first acting experience, and he is excited to continue learning and exploring different perspectives on parenting through his role in “Monkey Park.” 

Alex Hsu (Lloyd) is a 1.5 generation Taiwanese-American actor who has been seen on stages all around the country. He makes the Bay Area his home and has worked at all the major theaters in the area including A.C.T., Berkeley Rep, Marin Theater, and TheatreWorks Silicon Valley. Film and TV appearances include I (Almost) Got Away with It, East Side Sushi, and you can see Alex as the world-weary Triad mobster Bennie in the indie feature Protection Detail, now streaming at tubitv.com.

Evelyn is a writer, filmmaker, and theater artist born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area (Ohlone Land). ​She aims to craft truthful narratives on diasporic, feminine, and disabled experiences. Her screenplays have been recognized by Final Draft's Big Break contest (Finalist) and the Creative Word Awards (Preliminary Finalist). She graduated from Stanford University, where she studied English, ethnic studies, and theater.

Aiden, a 2023 Stanford graduate, is a filmmaker jointly based in Reno, NV and Los Angeles, CA. Through film, he explores the collision of opposing tones. His short film, Young Oak Tree, was the Los Angeles Short Film & Script Festival winner and the 'Best Student Short' recipient at the Dam Short Film Festival. As a producer, Aiden aims to support thought-provoking stories with heightened stakes.

We met during our senior year of college, when we lived in the same dorm and were cast in the same mixed-media play by the Asian American Theater Project (which Eugene, our DP, was also working on cinematography for). We spent many moments backstage and in Wilbur Dining Hall yapping about movies and goofing off with Aiden’s partner and Evelyn’s close friend, Eva. Having kept in touch after graduation and exchanged many, many scripts with each other, we are very excited to finally be collaborating on a project in-person again!