Wisteria Deng (邓钰山) is a theater creator and clinical psychologist based in New York City. Her work lives at the intersection of bilingual performance, migration, and collective healing. She is the founding artistic director of Vermilion Theater, an AAPI women-led nonprofit that develops Mandarin-English plays centering immigrant and queer voices and creates art-based workshops in partnership with community organizations.  

 Her productions, including “Juliet & Jul-yingtai”, reimagine canonical narratives through diasporic and feminist lenses and have been presented in New Haven, Boston, and New York. Alongside her artistic practice, Wisteria works clinically with immigrant families, gender-diverse youth, and patients facing serious illness. She specializes in trauma-informed care for individuals navigating significant life transitions, existential concerns and grief.  

Across projects, she is interested in how stories live in the body, and how performance can become a space where people see themselves as authors. She approaches collaborative work with humility and a belief that art is strongest when built with community.  

Vermilion Theater is a 501(c)(3) AAPI women-led nonprofit organization that creates bilingual performance and community mental health programming in parallel, using storytelling as both artistic practice and collective care. Through multilingual productions, facilitated dialogues, and art-based healing spaces, we uplift diasporic voices, expand access to culturally responsive mental health resources, and use storytelling as a practice of collective resilience, meaning-making, and social connection. We imagine a future where people are not asked to choose between being seen and being safe. Our vision is a cultural landscape where bilingual theater-making and community mental health work build long-term pathways to belonging and agency: a sense of home that transcends geopolitical spaces. 

Website: https://www.vermiliontheater.com/

Instagram:
@vermilion_theater
@wisteria