Frank Theatre's Be-Longing brings queer stories of diaspora to multimedia life
The innovative project is as keen to bridge cultures as it is art forms
The cast of Be-Longing Photo by Kimberly Ho
Frank Theatre streams Be-Longing from December 16 to 20, in partnership with CHIMERIK 似不像
CROSSING MULTIPLE CULTURES as well as art forms, Frank Theatre’s new Be-Longing has gone to bold new lengths to pull people together at a time when they’re being kept apart.
“Honestly, it’s the true definition of interdisciplinary collaboration--but also of transculturalism and true exchange,” says Fay Nass, artistic director of the company devoted to creating theatre work that places queer issues on a global canvas.
Be-Longing is notable not just because it experiments with fusing theatre, music, film, and media arts (see the video below for an idea of how it plays with sound and image). It also explores what it’s like to be a part of the queer diaspora--a complex experience that’s come into relief at this time of travel bans and lockdowns.
“Often you need home because that's one side of your identity,” explains Nass, who immigrated here from Iran, “but then there can be fear and shame around being queer in that culture; so on the other side, you go to a country for liberation and freedom. How do we navigate this binary identity? That’s part of the fabric of the show.
“And then you’re in the diaspora, you’re constantly trying to be present and longing for the things you used to have in your old country,” she adds, “all while trying to belong in your new country.”
Nass co-created the genre-jumping work along with media artist Sammy Chien, who has Taiwanese roots, and film actor Meghna Halder, from India.
Theirs are just a few of the cultural perspectives reflected in the show. The performers--Alexandra Lainfiesta, khattieQ, Jackson Wai Chung Tse & Baraka Rahmani--have connections to yet other parts of the world.
But the project also draws directly from firsthand accounts collected during Diaspora, a devised theatre project Nass ran with the Queer Arts Festival and Rainbow Refugees last year. It invited immigrant artists and community members to express their personal experiences of being queer and living in exile.
“Often with marginalized stories, they remain in a small community format and they don't expand to the larger theatre ecology,” explains Nass.
She wanted those stories to move to a professional stage format, but with COVID-19 hitting, the concept has evolved into the wildly experimental digital work Be-Longing that streams this week.
“The three of us looked at the material already there and reimagined the script that looks at this new form from its conception,” Nass explains.
Add the meeting of eastern and western sounds in Taymaz Saba’s score, as well as sound design by Helena Krobath and choreography by Arash Khakpour and you have a work that, like the people whose stories inspired it, defies categorization.
Photo by Kimberly Ho
Haldar describes the show as an “innovative and elegiac ode to home during a time of contagion”.
“It takes you on a personal journey that at times is fantastical and at times is real; at times it is funny and at times it is painful,” Nass says. “There’s music, there's joy, there’s dance.”
More than anything, it forms connection at a time when we must stay physically apart.
“It finds common ground between us,” Nass says.”All the work I do is to reduce the gap of misunderstanding; it's our responsibility as artists to walk toward that possibility.”
Info and tickets here.
Related Articles
