ABOUT
Aamera Siddiqui, Clay Man Soo*, Marisa B. Tejeda*, Antonio Rios-Luna, and James A. Williams*
Stage Managed by Lyndsey R. Harter*, Assistant Stage Managed by Mayra Gurrola Calderón
Design work by Sonya Berlovitz, Mina Kinukawa, Mitchell Frazier,
Peter Morrow, and Stacey Schwebach
*These actors are appearing thanks to ACTORS’ EQUITY ASSOCIATION, the union of professional actors and stage managers in the United States.
The two directors, Exposed Brick Theatre’s Co-Artistic Director Suzy Messerole, and Pillsbury House + Theatre’s Co-Artistic Producing Director Signe V. Harriday, hold high praise for playwright Christopher Chen’s ability to invite audiences and artists to engage in conversations around colonization and how it informs our relationships with one another. Harriday says, “The narrative is complicated in such a beautiful and intricate way that we really are left with asking ourselves deep questions about our own complicity in the injustices in the world.” As Messerole points out this fantasia, loosely inspired by E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India, uses familiar characters to ground this question about colonization in a really fundamental way. Can two people, one from a colonized country and one from the colonizing country, have a genuine friendship?
Messerole goes on to say that the play’s colonized Country X “could be India, but it could also be any number of other countries or occupied territories. There is such a huge history of colonization, and this play is speaking to that.” Harriday and Messerole have brought together a talented, intercultural and intergenerational group of actors in the Twin Cities to tell this story. Harriday says, “Minnesota is one of those places where for so long the narrative has been that this is a white dominated community, and that is certainly not the way that I experience it personally. I think this cast better reflects the incredible racial, ethnic, religious, and the many other ways we find a sense of identity through community. They all come from lots of different places, and I think that is going to create a rich and electric quality to watching how they engage with one another to tell this story.”
DETAILS:
DATES
September 21 – October 15, 2023
Sunday 10/1, Friday 10/6, and Friday 10/13 will feature post-show discussions.
LOCATION
Pillsbury House + Theatre
3501 Chicago Ave
Minneapolis, MN 55407
TICKETS
Pick-Your-Price (Reg. 30, $5 minimum online)
More information and tickets: 612.825.0459 or pillsburyhouseandtheatre.org
September 20 & 21 are preview performance. Audio description will be available on September 28, and ASL Interpretation on October 7.
There will be several post-show conversations, please see the “spotlight organizations” tab for more information.
SPOTLIGHT ORGANIZATIONS
OCT. 1 – MILLION ARTIST MOVEMENT
The Million Artist Movement (MAM) is a global vision and movement that believes in the role of ART in the campaign to dismantle oppressive racist systems against Black, Brown, Indigenous and disenfranchised PEOPLES.
OCT. 6 – The Native Youth Arts Collective
NYAC is a group of Native teens and young adult artists residing in the Little Earth and
East Phillips neighborhoods in Minneapolis.
OCT. 13 – AshaUSA
AshaUSA (Asha means hope) is a non-profit organization focused on creating healthy, happy, and harmonious South Asian communities by engaging and empowering South Asian women, men, and children through culturally specific programs and services.