Day Jobs, Opera Dreams tells the moving stories of immigrant Peking Opera artists’ Westward journeys, alongside the classic Chinese tale of Monkey King’s battle with the White-Boned Demon. These paired stories are told through a blend of Peking Opera, shadow puppetry, storytelling and contemporary theater techniques.

The latest original production by Chinese Theatre Works brings together episodes from the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West and the stories of the company’s immigrant performers’ travails as they move from classical training to underground economy.

In the face of shrinking audiences and cuts in government arts funding, these top performers in the sophisticated techniques of Peking opera left mainland China for the U.S. a few years ago. On arriving in New York, they could not support themselves through their art, the only employment they had known. So, like many others, they entered the grey zone of the U.S. economy: nail salons, dumpling factories, take-out restaurants, livery cabs, curbside painting stalls.

In Day Jobs, Opera Dreams, these talented Chinese American artists turn their skills towards themselves for the first time, in English as well as Chinese. They tell of the bitterness and hope of immigrant life in New York as the 21st century begins, of the tension between the day jobs which feed them and the art they have studied from childhood, which they now struggle to carry forward.