About Tea Ceremony with Pacific Plastics

Associate Professor

Theater & Performance Studies

Michelle Liu Carriger, PhD has been studying the Urasenke tradition of chado (“tea ceremony”) since 1999, in various locations including Los Angeles, Colorado, Kansas, Boston, London, and in Kyoto during a yearlong Midorikai fellowship at the Urasenke Gakuen Professional College of Chado. 

She holds a second degree Urasenke teaching license and chamei (tea name) “Somi.”

Carriger is currently at work on a book about Tea as a contemporary practice of historical embodiment and cultural performance. 

Project Architect & Designer

Hiro Chemers is an architect, designer, and M.Arch candidate in bio-integrated design at UCL Bartlett. 

While pursuing his Architecture BA at UCLA, Hiro served as design lead for Tea Ceremony with Pacific Plastics. 

Inspired by his grandfather, a self-taught architect and traditional Japanese carpenter who built a tea house by hand, Hiro's design blended traditional forms with modern materials –  emphasizing portability and sustainability. 

He currently works at Carbon Based, a startup building digital tools to transform architecture and design through material-centric workflows. 

Multidisciplinary Artist, Researcher and Curator

Aldo Schwartz is a San Francisco-born writer, artist, and filmmaker, currently living between California and Japan.

As a teenager, Aldo was introduced to tea ceremony by his stepmother and quickly became an avid practitioner. While studying film at UCLA, Aldo founded UTeaLA — a student organization devoted to the study and practice of chanoyu – which was featured on CBS News LA for AAPI+ Heritage Month.

Alongside TCWPP, he is also involved with various art, research and sustainability projects in the Japanese countryside.

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He is a 2026 MEXT Scholar at Tokyo University of the Arts, Graduate School of Global Arts and Creativity.

Tea Practitioner & Cultural Program Coordinator

Kaoru Kuribayashi is a tea practitioner, interdisciplinary artist, and arts and culture program coordinator at the Japan Foundation, Los Angeles. 

Rooted in her training in Chanoyu (Japanese tea ceremony), which she began at age ten, her work engages with traditional forms as living, evolving practices.

She holds master’s degrees from Goldsmiths, University of London (2020) and UCLA (2024), where she researched how Japanese traditional culture articulates concepts of mindfulness, ritual, and transcendental experience within a global contemporary context.

Kuribayashi’s practice traverses tea, fabric, performance, and meditative installation, focusing on the micro-gestures and sensory precision embedded in craft. She explores how traditional Japanese arts can activate expanded modes of engagement—prompting shifts in attention, slowness, and embodied reflection.

She has performed tea ceremonies and created participatory experiences in galleries and institutions across the U.S., U.K., and Japan. 

Ph.D., Theater & Performance Studies

Elizabeth McQueen (formerly Schiffler) is an Assistant Professor in the College of Fine Arts at Florida State University. 

She recently completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship at UC Davis as part of the Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar, Thinking Food at the Intersections. 

Her research examines the contradictions, anxieties, and aesthetics of contemporary performances that utilize food, from transnational performance art to global entertainment venues. 

Reflecting the collaborative nature of theater, she works with policymakers, nonprofits, chefs, and artists to contextualize and critically engage with food. Her writing can be found in Global Performance Studies, Theater Journal, and elsewhere. She holds a doctorate in Theater and Performance Studies and a certificate in Food Studies from UCLA.

She is the 2022 recipient of the Sustainable LA Grand Challenge Fellowship at UCLA, and a Global Food Initiative Fellow for the University of California Office of the President.

MFA Film Director & Screenwriter

Hailing from Shanghai, Merry May Ma is a writer/director/producer based in Los Angeles. 

Merry May served as "filmmaker-in-residence" for Tea Ceremony with Pacific Plastics, meticulously documenting the behind-the-scenes evolution of the project.

She discovered her passion for filmmaking while studying psychology and film studies at Washington University in St. Louis. During the pandemic, she directed a documentary about Chinese international students navigating the “Zoom University Era,” which inspired her journey to the UCLA MFA Directing Program.

Her work explores the resilience of the human soul, aiming to inspire audiences to “see more, hear more, and feel more” (Sontag, 1964). Her UCLA MFA thesis film, GARDENERS, won the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Grant and Panavision New Filmmaker Grant. 

She is also co-founder of API Film Night, the only film festival at UCLA showcasing AAPI filmmakers’ best works.

Materials Engineer & Researcher

Jacob Blum is a materials engineer working to advance sustainability through the reclamation and repurposing of existing materials. 

Jacob was born and raised in San Francisco before moving to LA to attend UCLA where he graduated from in 2023 with a degree in materials engineering. 

He was introduced to Japanese culture through his grandmother who lived in Japan for several years during the post-war period. His first travels outside of the US were to Japan where he was introduced to Tea as a teenager. 

Jacob is the CTO of Hyphae, leading the development of digital design tools that are revolutionizing how designers and creative professionals search for, evaluate, and incorporate novel materials into their design and manufacturing processes. 

Student Researcher + Media Intern

Tyler Neufeld (he/him) is a professional scenic artist, playwright, & immersive experience designer from Bakersfield, CA. His work often revolves around his queer identity, climate justice, & technology. He is an alum of the UCLA School of Theater. 

For UCLA’s new Bruin Fringe Fest, he wrote and directed a one-act called The Great Specific Garbage Catch. This show focused on the theatricality of activism, examines the line between performative activism and performance activism, and questions whether one person can ever truly make a difference. 

In his free time, Tyler does stand-up comedy, works on short film sets, and leads the Playwrights Circle as the Development Director of Untitled Theatre Company. 

Artist and Designer

Yuko, originally from Japan, is an undergraduate student at UCLA, majoring in Design Media Arts with a focus in graphic design.  

With a passion for visual storytelling, Yuko has contributed to projects across artistic disciplines – including theater, film, photography, animation, illustration, and design. 

Yuko has worked as an Art PA and Set dresser on UCLA MFA film productions, and she currently serves as lead graphic designer for TFT’s annual API Film Night. 

Outside of the stage and screen, Yuko is a prolific artist, whose commitment to environmental conservation was recognized through an award-winning entry in a Japanese climate art competition. 

ith a diverse skill set and passion, Yuko continues to work in the field of design and visual arts and strives to make a meaningful impact through art.