rasgos asiaticos

my uncle's records

2008-02-04T19:52:00.000-08:00

To write rasgos asiaticos I did some research in Mexico. On one of those trips my uncle Baldo was very upset that I was asking questions about my family. He told me that I wasn't letting my uncle's spirit rest. I had no reason to unbury the past. It was on one of those trips though that my uncle gave me a stack of Andres's records – all in Chinese. When Andres died – they burned all of his belongings but all these years my uncle had saved these records. He gave them to me along with some old photographs. He still wouldn't openly approve of what I am doing. My family is very private but his giving me those records was an unspoken acknowledgment that what I was attempting was important. It would be a year later that I finally found the record player that would play those old records. In San Antonio, I cooked a huge feast - literally washed the records with soap and water (which I now know is very bad) and listened to the same music my uncle listened to in his back room and wept...

Response from Mira:
There is a privacy of pain and shame that every family holds and keeps. I believe that it is our job to give those feelings movements and voices, only then can their spirits truly rest.

and mama c says...

2008-01-30T13:52:00.000-08:00

Laurie Carlos is doing an artist residency at CalArts right now. She is directing my partner writer Asiimwe's second year production and workshopping her performance novel, Pork Chop Wars. Again blessed and grateful for her presence.

Laurie invited me to work with the actors on the Pork Chop Wars and it is reaffirming so much of what I know about rasgos asiaticos and my way of doing theatre. I feel that rasgos asiaticos is also a performance novel. It has the potential to be an epic story. I want to travel to China in 2009 to research, write and live for at least a year.

Here are some quotes from Laurie during our rehearsal:

- As an artist you must work with clear vision all the time.
Even if it is to say you don’t know.
- I felt constrained by the way we are able to talk about history across oceans, multilingually. How did we come to be?
- The American play is too small, the opera too dramatic. The story is epic, the novel performed, lending itself to many different mediums.
- As spirit speaks so does the flesh.
- We are a part of each other’s family tree.
- This story moves all the way to the present, all the way to the past.
- In everyone’s body there is a different history so the words provoke a different sense of history for each person. A collaboration of memory and what is happening right then.
- Every experience that happens is the reason we are here. You never know who you are related to.
- Conjure the restoration of the ancestors.
- This conversation happened long before you were born and will be happening long after you are gone.

and she left me on the corner of venice blvd. crying...

2008-01-30T07:55:00.001-08:00

Or at least that is how the mythology will be created. sharon bridgforth did dramaturgical work on the final draft of the script. What I love about her - is that she broke it all down - without even looking at the text. Writing a play is very different than doing solo work or performance pieces. Carl Hancock Rux really works a script - takes it page by page and is helping me to understand dramatic structure, language, and rhythm of the piece while sharon brings it back to the personal and I need both. She sat me down and asked some serious questions about my intention, my family, my fear - that helped me articulate what this piece is actually about.

She asked me questions such as:
- What were your mother's dreams?
- What is your greatest fear at this moment?
- What are you carrying that is hers, that's not serving you?
- What's hers that serves you?
- What does each character have to do to release what is not serving them?

Then she asked me to imagine my mother a young woman. Gave me a photograph to see and asked me to write her a letter. I was so beat down by the time she was done - I had to give offerings to Yemaya and cry next to the ocean.

In January, we did a table reading of the script at the Center for African and African American Studies in Austin. The Center really is a model for what ethnic studies centers across the country should be doing - opening the resources of the university to artists, scholars, activists, and community so that we are having conversations across, race, class, gender, and sexuality. I am so blessed to have a community of women artists that support me that Omi and sharon helped create through the Austin Project. Ana Lara, Wura Ogunji, Monique Cortez, Omi Osun, and Florinda Bryant read. An actor from CalArts - Touissant - drove all the way from Houston to read the part of Andres. Jennifer Marguilles did some fierce copy editing and sharon facilitated the session. Much gratitude to everyone that walks with me on this journey. Deep, deep gratitude and luv.

msg. from the director...

2008-01-29T10:26:00.000-08:00

In an email message this morning... Mira writes "It is these moments that confirm you are on the right path. Little visible miracles to remind you that invisible ones are happening all the time."

el camino...

2008-01-28T23:38:00.000-08:00

My great-grandparents and grandfather are from Canton, China. They all migrated to Mexico at different times in the early 20th century and are now buried in Tampico and Monterrey. rasgos asiaticos is a series of conversations across time - between four generations of women - great-grandmother, grandmother, mother, daughter - who are searching for an understanding of hope, Love, and home despite a history of violence and abuse.

I started writing rasgos asiaticos now over five years ago and I have performed it as a performance/installation at many different stages in its development. The first time I performed it was from a series of poems that were an attempt for me to piece together some of my fragmented memories. Excerpts of rasgos asiaticos were performed in Austin, Texas at Resistencia Bookstore, Austin Latino/a Lesbian Gay Organization and the Mexican-American Cultural Center; in San Antonio, Texas at the Esperanza Peace & Justice Center; in Los Angeles, California at the Casa de Nuclear Pinatas, in New York for the P.O.V. Media Institute; and in Havana, Cuba. Excerpts of it have been published in La Voz de Esperanza and Frontiers: A Journal on Women’s Studies.

I workshopped earlier versions of rasgos asiaticos with Adelina Anthony and sharon bridgforth. The current version being produced at CalArts was developed in Playwright’s Lab under the direction of Carl Hancock Rux.

auditions/casting...

2008-01-28T23:36:00.002-08:00

Before beginning callbacks, Mira told the actors to ask permission from those who came before them – call them into the room. With their hands on heart, she asked them to hear a resounding “yes” from those who guide them - a “yes” to them and their work. She explained how important it was to support each other, to help each other do their best work. One person’s brilliance does not take away from your own.

Then, Mira taped a sheet of paper onto the wall. On the paper - six rituals taken from my text:
- touch the floor with your feet/make contact
- drop the rice
- bring the ancestors into the room/thank them for being with you.
- throw the rock
- take out the fear/jump over it
- shake sorrow from the hips

She asked the actors to find each ritual in their body through gesture and then create a ceremony out of it. They had 10 minutes. Then, we turned on the CD player and danced to “Un rinconcito en el cielo,” again and again - around the circle – each person bringing to the center – ceremony.

What I learned:
- The dancing is necessary to hold in the joy. What happens when it stops? This is a place I have to explore in the writing.

- Andres is a sweet, gentle man – does not understand everything that is happening around him and yet it is a part of him/in his body.

- Physical action holds emotion. Wong paints memory with her body.

- The cumbia is a natural calling – calling each other into being (mother, grandmother, daughter) each one is constantly calling the other into being. The words are a conjuring of one another into the space. They are seeing each other – describing for themselves – one another. They must claim the need for each other in space, whether they are speaking or not. For example, WONG does not speak very much but she is holding everyone up.

Questions for the actors:
- How do you hold each other up in space?
- Who are you giving energy to?
- Who do you need to support?
- When do you need to be supported?

Challenges:
- The text is multilingual. In four different languages – English, Spanish, Cantonese, and Chicano slang. The actors are working hard to get all those words in their mouth - switching languages, accents, and tones. Our cast is multiethnic – which I very much believe in – a reflection of our mestizaje/chicanismo – brown, black, asian. After all, my mama is a brown woman who married a white man who took her to Germany where my first sister was born and my mothers father was a chinese man living in mexico who married a mexican whose father was indian and we grew up eating chinese sausage and tamales for christmas.

- The text is queer. I realize that in addition to language, I am also translating queer culture and I am reminded once again of the absence of queer voices of color on the stage. My cast, however, is both queer and straight, open and willing to learn.

- The text is non-linear and not literal. We move in and out of time, space and place. I am very excited to be working with someone who is both a choreographer and a director who understands the movement, the music, and the rhythm of the piece and who is capable of creating beautiful moving images from the text.

link...

2008-01-28T23:36:00.001-08:00

http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/frontiers/v024/24.2grise.html

bios...

2008-01-28T23:35:00.001-08:00

Virginia Grise is a Chicana cultural worker, writer, performer, and teacher from San Antonio, Texas. She has taught writing in the juvenile correction system and has facilitated organizing efforts among women, immigrant, Chicano, working class and queer youth.

The Panza Monologues, her one-woman performance piece, was published by Evelyn Street Press and has toured throughout the Southwest. As a member of Accion Zapatista, she traveled to Chiapas Mexico as a peace observer and edited a volume of Zapatista communiqués entitled Conversations with Don Durito, published by Autonomedia Press. Virginia is currently seeking her MFA in Writing for Performance at the California Institute of Arts, under the mentorship of Carl Hancock Rux.

Mira Kingsley’s directing and choreography has been seen at REDCAT (Daughter of a Cuban Revolutionary, Circle Course) The Bam Next Wave Festival (Once Upon a Time in Chinese America), The Kitchen (Warrior Sisters), The Edinburgh Fringe Festival (The Cantata For Acquiescence), The 24th Street Theater (Good Night), The Guggenheim Museum Works in Process Series, ASU’s Gammage Auditorium, The John Harms Center for the Arts, The Seattle International Children’s Festival, HERE, The Yard, Joyce Soho, and The 24th Street Theater among others. She is currently working with Jazz musician Fred Ho on, Dragon Vs Eagle, for the BAM Next Wave Festival in “09”. As an actress and dancer she has performed all over the place including Broadway, Carnegie Hall, and The Metropolitan Opera. Mira is a recipient of the Jacob K Javits Fellowship in Theater and has a double Masters degree in Theater Direction and Choreography from California Institute of the Arts where she currently teaches Dance Theatre.