REUNION
New work | 8.14.24 Developmental workshop
This project is supported by a grant from the MAP Fund and a grant from the Jerome Foundation.
REUNION is a new evening length live performance that is a cross between a history documentary, a detective caper, and a BFF campfire conversation. The best friends in question are So and Bex, with roots in Hong Kong and Singapore respectively, who have both embarked on a research mission to learn why their ancestors left China. As they rifle through birth and death certificates and newspaper clippings, they get lost down surreal rabbit holes of reenacting parallel moments- one moment So puts on a wig and plays a BBC journalist reporting Princess Diana’s death, another moment Bex is in an oversized suit playing So’s dad, watching the 1997 news. Both Hong Kong and Singapore were British colonies, remember? As they trace their individual ancestral histories, So and Bex stumble into startling connections between their Chinese roots, and discover a political resistance in their past that is strikingly relevant to their present.
Why did we make this work?
With the rise of authoritarianism and mis/disinformation, we have witnessed a growing disconnection in the Chinese community in the US. As the conservative Chinese American faction swells, we as young progressive Chinese people are often stuck in inertia, feeling both embarrassed and lost at how to engage with our kin. The palpable distance from our roots that we feel has only grown through generations of assimilation and political repression. As two people from very different threads of the Chinese diaspora in the US, we’re also attuned to how popular media paints a homogeneous picture of Chinese people, when our immigration experiences and ancestral paths are quite distinct. Developing REUNION was a bit of an accident, and happened organically as we’ve accompanied each other as best friends on our parallel journeys of tracing our familial roots and learning Chinese history. We hope that this work offers an example of how people in the Chinese diaspora can embrace the histories we have while collectively forging the futures we want, and that friendship can light the way.