James is an actor and a writer, born and raised in Guangzhou, China. Ever since moving to New York in 2010, he has developed a fervent love for the arts. After learning English just for three years and absolutely zero clue on how to sing, he somehow found himself on a stage performing in Mary Poppins as Chairman Banks—back then a seemingly impossible task. He's quite happy to say that was his first introduction to... acting! 

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Upon attending Tisch School of the Arts, James became a classically trained actor with the Atlantic Acting School and The Classical Studio. He learned stage-combat with the OBIE winning fight master J. David Brimmer and took a year long masterclass in acting with the insightful duo Daniel Spector & Sara Topham—who starred in the recent Broadway production of Leopoldstadt. It is also during this time that James fully embraced writing. He double-majored with the Dramatic Writing Department and have since produced—and still working on (keyword: working)—three feature length film scripts, one dramatic TV pilot, one full length play and one Succession spec-script. During such time he's had the great guidance of Richard E. Wesley, Dana Kitchens, Shinho Lee, and the TONY Award nominated Lucas Hnath. 

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This is all to say James has encountered some great connoisseurs of their fields and he wishes to fully bring with him all that he's learned to the world: and make new works! As daunting and gut wrenching as this job can be, it might not compare to the sheer size of James' dreaming. He aims to serve the stories with absolute compassion, true dignity, and maybe most important of all, curious joy. For it is most vital—he believes—to have storytelling be our guide in this ever-so-fast-changing world. 

Here's a side spiel. When someone ask for advice or opinion, try to state one rather than saying "do what you feel is right" or "whatever you want". Trust the person will take in what you've offered and they'd feel whether they want to follow your advice or not. They'll get closer to what they believe is right. And I (breaking out of third person) believe that's what storytelling is. 

This is the long game, the tougher but more rewarding way for the world to understand each other. Anyway, enough philosophizing. It very may be impossible for the world to hold art to such a position, but that's why it's necessary to try. 

 

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