PERFORMANCE: THE FOLDING WIFE
“It’s got a double-edged meaning … you are folding into someone’s perception of you, or being shaped by someone else’s culture and country,” says writer Paschal Daantos Berry of his upcoming The Folding Wife, an intergenerational tale of migration through the perspective of one Filipino woman. “She is packing up her house [and] talks about her memory of her mother and her grandmother. The two woman … are given life through small fragments of anecdotes.” While based on experiences from Daantos Berry’s life – he migrated to outback South Australia in 1984 as an 11 year old – and that of his sister with whom he collaborates, it was, “Distant enough to feel like it’s someone else’s story …We wanted to give a window to a world that so many people inhabit, it’s not particular to Filipinos.” What’s more, it’s not only a tale of the migrant experience, but also of the home and family that is left behind – and that’s where the Anino Shadowplay Collective come in. “I didn’t want the work to be too reflective, I wanted the work to communicate with Filipinos who actually stayed in the Philippines,” muses Daantos Berry. Their arresting stage presence didn’t hurt either, marrying, “Poetic text with a very unique visual language which is a hybrid between lo-tech and high-tech operations,” – from paper cut outs and coloured gel, to live filmed video feeds. When asked if this could be The Folding Husband instead of wife, Daantos Berry laughs. It’s a question that has perplexed them for a while. “When I spoke to my sister about this [project] our mother had just passed away. For both of us, we really looked at the idea of who these women were that surrounded us and had raised us. The passage of Filipino women through 100 years – it’s significant. It’s both challenging as well as common knowledge.”
May 19-22, Performance Space, 245 Wilson St, Eveleigh, $20-30, 1300 723 038, performancespace.com.au
