Tom X. Chao is a comedic playwright, actor, and musician based in New York City whose works have been produced in the United States and Canada.
In 2016, Chao began collaborating with award-winning[3] playwright-performer Kim Katzberg on a full-length show entitled Hot for Feminist Theory Professor.
The lead character spends the entirety of the show delivering existential monologues while lying under a large piece of black cloth, until he is challenged by an otherworldly woman in a white dress.
[10] Chao's first produced work to include a full cast and the only in which he has never played a role, Summer, Deepening Then Gone involves a teenage girl who magically summons an unwitting poet to protect her from the unwanted advances of a suitor.
[15] An early performance of the play was included in the video archive series of New York City experimental theater NotPerformanceArt.
[18] An absurdist comedy in which an experimental theater production—involving a puppet show in which all the characters are abstract shapes—devolves into a scathing deconstruction of its creator and his failed romantic life when he's confronted and ridiculed by a series of women.
Cats Can See the Devil premiered in 2003 at the New York International Fringe Festival[19] in a production starring Chao and directed by John Harlacher, with choreography by Tony Award nominee Alex Timbers.
In a 2011 revival of the play, Charlotte Pines (previously seen in Play Dead (show) by Todd Robbins and Teller (magician)) was nominated for a New York Innovative Theatre Award for outstanding actress in a lead role for her performance as the Magical Being,[28] a production that The New York Times called "intriguing... droll and ruminative.
For this reading, several members of the original cast (including former MTV VJ Kevin Seal) were reunited, along with new additions Jim Turner (of Duck's Breath Mystery Theatre) and Dale Goodson.