WOW Cafe Theater and Lioness Productions present PASSING, an investigative dance-theatre work conceived and directed by Nana Dakin that examines how people of mixed race or ethnicity form their identities. Using masks by Deven E. Sisler and a movement based narrative choreography by Stefanie Perry, an ensemble cast of ten women question the way skin color, hair, eyes, noses and our need to belong, determine our identities. Moving back and forth through time, journeying from the particular to the universal, the scientific to the historical, PASSING tells the provocative, funny, and heartbreaking story of the fears, judgments, and desires that drive racial and ethnic tensions, asking: How do people, who live a multiple otherness from within, reconcile counter-posed systems of thought and behavior?
PASSING was collectively created with/and stars Monica Carter, Seiko Carter, Gabriela DeAnda, Andrea Dickins, Genevieve Gearhart, Oona Ibar, Jennifer Kidwell, Erinina Ness, Margarita Tavarez and Joyce Wu.
Dates/times: Thu-Sat Feb. 16-18 and 23-25 at 8PM
Sunday Feb. 19 and Saturday Feb. 25 at 3PM, 2006
Place: WOW Café Theater, 59-61 East 4th Street, 4th Flr (btwn
Bowery and 2nd Avenue)
Reservations call: 212 7774280 or email passing@wowcafe.org
Tickets: $10-$15 sliding scale
Deven E. Sisler is an actor, clown, teacher & mask-maker presently residing in the New Jersey/New York City area. Ms. Sisler has managed theater productions, fundraised and performed internationally with a range of companies, including Chashama, The Faux-Real Theatre Company, Dell'Arte and Theatre Amoeba. Currently, she is working with and fundraising for Clowns Without Borders to bring performances and workshops to Katrina afflicted areas.
Stefanie Perry discovered her passion for African Dance under the tutelage of Master Dancer, Djoniba Mouflet at the Djoniba African Dance & Drum Centre. In 2001, she was invited to join Kotchegna Dance Company, featuring West African dances from Cote Dí Ivoire, Mali, Guinea, and Senegal. Since then she has studied under renown Dance Masters Vado Diomande, Hamidou Koivoqui, Biboti Ouikahilo and many others. Stefanie has traveled to Senegal and continues to study and teach dance choreography and drumming.
WOW Cafe Theater and Lioness Productions present PASSING, an investigative dance-theatre work conceived and directed by Nana Dakin that examines how people of mixed race or ethnicity form their identities. Using masks by Deven E. Sisler and a movement based narrative choreography by Stefanie Perry, an ensemble cast of ten women question the way skin color, hair, eyes, noses and our need to belong, determine our identities. Moving back and forth through time, journeying from the particular to the universal, the scientific to the historical, PASSING tells the provocative, funny, and heartbreaking story of the fears, judgments, and desires that drive racial and ethnic tensions, asking: How do people, who live a multiple otherness from within, reconcile counter-posed systems of thought and behavior?
PASSING was collectively created with/and stars Monica Carter, Seiko Carter, Gabriela DeAnda, Andrea Dickins, Genevieve Gearhart, Oona Ibar, Jennifer Kidwell, Erinina Ness, Margarita Tavarez and Joyce Wu.
Dates/times: Thu-Sat Feb. 16-18 and 23-25 at 8PM
Sunday Feb. 19 and Saturday Feb. 25 at 3PM
Place: WOW Café Theater, 59-61 East 4th Street, 4th Flr (btwn Bowery and 2nd Avenue)
Reservations call: 212 7774280 or email passing@wowcafe.org
Tickets: $10-$15 sliding scale
Nana Dakin is half-Thai, half-American. She spent her childhood and adolescence moving around internationally due to her father's work with UNHCR (the UN Refugee agency). She has lived in Thailand, the US, Pakistan, France, Tanzania and Switzerland. Previously, she directed and produced The Little Prince (Backyard Productions), she has worked as an assistant director on Savage Acts (Ma-Yi Theatre Company), Death of Nations Chapter 2: Will We Not Return? (International WOW Company), and MOTHS (dir. Kate Brown, Workshop Theatre Company).
Deven E. Sisler is an actor, clown, teacher & mask-maker presently residing in the New Jersey/New York City area. Ms. Sisler has managed theater productions, fundraised and performed internationally with a range of companies, including Chashama, The Faux-Real Theatre Company, Dell'Arte and Theatre Amoeba. Currently, she is working with and fundraising for Clowns Without Borders to bring performances and workshops to Katrina afflicted areas.
Stefanie Perry discovered her passion for African Dance under the tutelage of Master Dancer, Djoniba Mouflet at the Djoniba African Dance & Drum Centre. In 2001, she was invited to join Kotchegna Dance Company, featuring West African dances from Cote Dí Ivoire, Mali, Guinea, and Senegal. Since then she has studied under renown Dance Masters Vado Diomande, Hamidou Koivoqui, Biboti Ouikahilo and many others. Stefanie has traveled to Senegal and continues to study and teach dance choreography and drumming.