Even then, though, she was faced with a challenge of access; when she first moved to New York, she had no formal training nor contacts in the business.
Additionally, in her words, "For the most part there weren’t stories that reflected my experience or people on stage that looked like me.
[1] Eventually, in part with the support of a community and a mentor, she became an award-winning professional director, teacher, and artist.
[8] In early 2014, Adrales directed Chinglish, a comedy about cross-cultural communication (or lack thereof) at the Portland Center Stage.
The Oregon Artswatch says, "The show, directed by May Adrales, is as smooth as its revolving scene changes, capturing a brittle and deftly timed presentational comic edge in its performances and navigating the tricky shoals of its bilingual text (about a quarter of the dialogue is in Mandarin, with English supertitles) without an apparent hitch".