Left and Right, or Being who/where you are

Performance Dates & Registration

Feb 10, 7pm EST
Feb 11, 7pm EST
Feb 12, 7pm EST
Feb 13, 12pm EST
Feb 14, 12pm EST

Duration: Approx. 90 mins

Please note: Participants will need Chrome and a laptop or desktop to be able to access the performance (no mobile or iPad access possible). For the best experience, we also recommend the use of headphones throughout the performance.

Description

In this time of intense divisions, a left partisan and a right partisan speaking with each other seems like an impossible conversation - or, at least, a conversation that is impossible to have meaningfully on certain so-called “hot-button” topics and complex realities, such as the COVID-19 pandemic or immigration.

This devised, interactive online multimedia performance stages scenes that feature such conversations … performed by both human actors and bots. The human and machinic actors play different characters that embody, complicate, and deconstruct different types of performative, prescribed political identities on the left-right spectrum (approached with a US-focus but through a transnational lens). These political identities are shown to be not static or unalterable, rather, the result of relational, performative processes that occur over time and with technology. Theatrically playing with(in) these processes, Left and Right aims to call forth more capacious ways of being - and being political.

Presented by Brown Arts Initiative. Free and open to the public. Registration required.

Credits

Concept & Directing: Ioana B. Jucan
Text: Patrick Elizalde, Andra Jurj, Marcela Mancino, Fabiola Petri, Ioana B. Jucan, Melody Devries
Actors: Marcela Mancino, Patrick Elizalde, Andra Jurj, Fabiola Petri
Digital Design and Development: Tong Wu, Nuntinee Tansrisakul & Yuguang Zhang
Theatrical Design: Marcela Mancino
Bot Design: Roopa Vasudevan
Bot Concept: Roopa Vasudevan, Anthony Burton
Choreography: Adriana Barza
Sound Design: Peter Bussigel
Production Manager: Madeline Greenberg
Dramaturgy: Melody Devries
Performance Consultants: Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Alex Juhasz, and the Beyond Verification Team associated with the Digital Democracies Institute (SFU)
Part of this researhc was made possible by the support of the Canada 150 Research Chairs program and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada