Lauren Tom

Biography: Lauren Tom was raised in Highland Park, Illinois as part of the only Asian family in a largely Jewish neighborhood. She started as a dancer with the Hubbard St. Dance Company and at 17 moved to New York to perform in "A Chorus Line" on Broadway. She has also performed on Broadway in "Hurlyburly" and "Doonesbury" and in numerous plays at the New York Shakespeare Festival including "American Notes" for which she received an Obie Award. She has worked with directors Peter Sellars and Joanne Akalaitis at the Goodman Theater, The Guthrie Theater, La Jolla Playhouse and the Kennedy Center. Film credits include "The Joy Luck Club," "Cadillac Man," "Mr. Jones," "When A Man Loves a Woman," "Bad Santa," and "In Good Company". On television she currently has a starring role as Mai Washington on "Men in Trees". Lauren is an accomplished voiceover actress and has starring roles as Minh on "King of the Hill," and as Amy Wong on "Futurama." "Lauren's writing credits include "Tiger on the Right" for which she won a DramaLogue Award in 1991.

Lauren Tom writes and performs in her solo-performance show "25 Psychics," which is a look at her own life as a self-professed "New Age Seeker." She has done everything from growing her own fungus to fire-walking in her quest, ultimately discovering her own grandmother as a source of wisdom and comfort. The humor at the heart of the work rests in the similarities and differences between herself and the powerful family matriarch underscoring our own difficulties as creatures from (if not of) a tradition while still living in the modern world. Tom portrays a host of characters including a few of the title's psychics who she meets along the way to becoming her own woman.

Tom is a featured performer with Great Leap's productions of "A Slice of Rice" and "A Slice of Rice, Frijoles and Greens."… Expand