a pearl poem

For my exploration, I decided to do some writing on pearls. Below is a poem I wrote, followed by a less structured free association that I'm sharing in case some of the images are inspiring.

salt and lustre

you started as an irritant

not a grain of sand

but an early trauma

bruising the fleshy lips of your inner mantle

or a parasite

that would sicken and rot your soft innards

I enclose you

in calcium carbonate and nacre

a defense against harm

an immune system response

the princess and the pea

humans pry us open with sharp knives

throw us away on great piles

flesh rotting in heat and sun

protective shells forced open

searching for that rare pearl

evidence of trauma made luminous

they pluck out our sheen

place us in crowns and scepters

sort our hurts by size and color and lustre

women string us around their necks

with their matching sweater sets

men slurp out our innards

tasting the sea

Maud Allan adorned herself

in flesh and pearl

white flesh and white pearl

asking to be opened up

tasted

the salt and lustre of hurt

(free association on pearls)
the pearly gates nacre iridescent lustre layers calcium carbonate what a pearl pearl milk tea tits n ass boba anal beads sexy excretions feminine stolen from mollusk inserting a plastic bead into your fleshy mantle loving admiring exotifying your hurts your defense mechanisms your way of healing

Cyn's Creative Response #6

Here's the movement I came up with for my half of the "Mixing Waters: Saalach and San Lorenzo" poem.  It's fairly heavily based on the movement remix that Shy and I co-choreographed during our one day LA residency.  I left some silence in places so there would be room for the other half of the poem.  Also, for the last movement, I originally meant to do the action where my arms disappear in my T-shirt, but I wore the wrong T-shirt and it was really awkward, so I did the erasing movement instead.

Mixing Waters - San Lorenzo from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.

password: mixed

Also, for reference, here's the full poem.

FEEDBACK: I'm pretty much open to any thoughts y'all might have, particularly how this might fit in the context of the larger "Back to Beautiful" project.

Borders Resurfacing: River Freewrite

August 9, 2017, 1:50 pm, San Lorenzo Park.

the sun beats down without breeze, legs too warm in sweatpants, tiny yellow amaranth seeds clinging to my shins, evidence of where I’ve been.  the rapid sound of Spanish: I look up and see two men rolling by on their bicycles, chatting as they ride.  I wanted to walk along the river today, not on the raised concrete paths and pedestrian bridges like freeways that shuttle more privileged bodies above working class POC communities, but close enough to touch the water. 

I hate myself a little now, how my skin pulls and shrinks away as I sit on the dried up grass next to a homeless encampment in this city park.  how easily I empathize with the Chinese who once lived here, who were once seen as trash, unwanted, dirty, littering the riverbanks, and how hard it is for me to exhale and relax on this riverbank where people make their home.  I unpeel my burrito, and the salt overwhelms my mouth, lips and face purse tightly, unable to taste anything but discomfort.

the signs warned me not to leave the paved path, but I ventured among the late summer plants, green and dried out and taller than me.  deep purple brushes rising with strong straight spines, small pale bursts of lavender and white, a glory of dandelions.  the insects were huge: giant fireflies buzz-sailing through the brush, a miracle of a yellow butterfly so close to my head.  ducks with brown tufted heads and drab bodies, dipping and feeding, tail-feathers in the air.  I was alarmed at how low the water was after just one week: rocks exposed in the riverbed, resembling the Salaach more now.  the strange phenomenon of the current flowing both ways, a two lane watery highway around a rocky divider.  traces of people, but uglier than the stray crushed can and burnt rocks of refugee fires at the Salaach.  a stray black shoe with a sensible heel.  newspapers.  cardboard arranged carefully as a bed.  shampoo and juice bottles and cans of chicken soup.  faded sweat shorts, wadded up and dusty with river sand.  a pair of sturdy black sneakers, placed carefully in the shade of a shrub.  and a book with a red cover: North Toward Home.

whom do we think of as disposable, as dirt?  migrant bodies, homeless bodies, refugee bodies?  as I tread through the plant-life, causing small quivers tremors disturbances beneath my feet, picking my way between mud and slime and scrappy wildflowers, what keeps me from seeing this river -- and its people -- as beautiful? 

Borders Resurfacing: Shyamala's creative response 2 remix

Poem re-mix

Stumbling onto this edge between sand and water.

Roaring. Constant. Ebbing.

So much can be hidden under water

no bridges

No one gets to cross over

Stumbling onto this edge between

beauty, and and and peace.

I exhale

yellow heart shaped leaves decomposing in the mud

Stumbling between

Patrolling the water from the air
For sharks...waste... people....

Stumbling

People are risking their lives to save their lives.

Right now. 



Untitled from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.

password: resurface

Borders Resurfacing: Cynthia's Creative Response 2

Here is my writing remix and my movement remix!  For fun, I tried adding parts of Priya's poem as a soundtrack for the movement phrase after already choreographing and filming the phrase.  The first video is in silence, and the second one includes excerpts from Priya's writing.

borders resurfacing

stumbling at the edge of my adopted city

I don't have answers

it's all rigs and cranes and metal

frames that clog the horizon

his incoming crates were marked suspicious

after 9/11 never again to be released

hidden underwater 1900 miles

of pipeline built on Tongva land

lost bodies, child bodies

catching little frogs and river creatures

sludge oil backfire spluttering bubbles

my body alert unsure

people with their belongings strapped

to bicycles in trash bags

it is not beautiful here  

wooden houses perched rickety

so precarious so precious so

easily swept away

never again to be released

this winter of unremembering

in my imagination’s memory it is always summer

and and and peace

I exhale 

between sand and water

between Germany and Austria

I exhale oasis

the Salzach meets another river: the Saalach

pelican flies across sky

forgetting the border

the border resurfaces

a site of hope and despair

refugee life migrant life

thousands fleeing Syria

brown skin black life

roaring constant people risking their lives
ebbing rushing to save their lives

password: remix4

Borders Resurfacing remix from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.

password: remix4_priya

remix_priya from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.

Re-imagining Citizenship Revision "10 little"

I got inspired to add some context to my study about the "10 little..." because of Meena's feedback on my last assignment. I am grateful to Iyatunde who filmed it for me and helped as an outside eye.


10 little from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.
password: citizenship

Questions:
1.  What is your experience watching this?

2. Do you feel this revision addresses Meena's comment: "This study also makes light to me of the tension between the different uses of the word Indian in a colonial context, but is specific to Shyamala's positionality as a South Asian woman. Unless maybe there is a way to FLIP the original meaning of the song but smake it specific to people's identity and history"

Is there anything else that you imagine I could do to address the above comment? 

3.  Are there any other red flags or questions this brings up for you?

4. Do you have any ideas of what I should wear?  Iyatunde thought of a t-shirt with #noDAPL #BLM (of course the blacklivesmatter is not addressed in this section of our piece just yet).

5. Any other thoughts?

blood run performance

Here is the footage of blood run from my performance at Highways in June 2016!

password: "bloodline"

blood run: Letters to a Lost Aboriginal Ancestor

These letters are the result of a daily writing practice in which I write a letter to my imagined female indigenous ancestor each morning.

FEEDBACK QUESTIONS:
(1) What ideas, images, or specific phrases resonate with you?
(2) Are there any parts that you find confusing and would like clarification on?  Anything you find problematic?
(3) How might you imagine these being used in performance, installation, or other public sharing of art?  How might they relate to or be integrated with the other blood run material?
(4) Other thoughts?

21 June 2015

Dear Ancestor,

Hi.  你好。 I don't know what language to greet you in, phonemes racing trolling lazily in my blood cells, the pulse and undertow of the Pacific.  I speak to you like dolphins, sonar, vibrations of oceanic language in our bones, your bones long disappeared, turned to dust, wreathed with kelp.  I imagine you, brown skin, lined face, joyful wrinkles around your eyes, unbound feet.  Strong capable hands that till the soil, a child on your hip, taro and sweet potato at your feet, ordering the men around. 

But maybe that is wrong.  Maybe you are young, a young woman with deep-set eyes and a long nose and sea-black waves of hair.  Maybe you saw the dark silhouettes of approaching ships, the masses of men who streamed onto your island like long-queued rats storming the fertile western plains, with horror.  With wonder.  With fear.  With love.

So many generations, an ocean and several languages later, your mixed blood daughter writes you in English.  The history books say we are extinct, your language and people are extinct.  The history books were not written by our people.  I doubt my motives but I want to know you, I take bitter rice wine into my mouth, temples clench squeeze from the harsh alcohol, spew and retch in a would-be blessing.  I kneel at the Pacific, half a world and four hundred years later, and touch the water, waiting hoping to hear you.

Love,
Cynthia

22 June 2015

Dear Ancestor,

Hi again.  It's me, your mixed lost daughter of the future.  Yesterday, I walked along the Pacific, saltwater swirling sand around ankles and calves, and thought about another coast, craggy rocky waves crashing the sailors praying to Mazu for protection as they crossed the black water from Fujian.  What did you think and feel as they crashed headlong into your shores and lives?  What does it mean to think about my origin point as a story of colonization?  What would you think of me?  Would you look at me, scornfully, and tell me I am not one of your own?  Would you look at me as the greatest mistake in the history of your people, to love and trust a foreigner?  Would you regard me with loving abhorrence, the offspring, perhaps, of a forced encounter by the field one night?  Would your heart be sad, betrayed, understanding of the layers of assimilation, of all the lost and imposed cultures and histories that run through my ancestral and dancing body?  What have I inherited, what have I chosen?  Is it possible, dear ancestor, that I inherited my love of border-crossing and cultural difference from you?  Or is that wishful thinking, colonial guilt?  In the end this is the unanswerable question: was your "marriage" to that Han man -- my ancestor, a 李 -- a choice, a survival tactic, an act of violence?

With love and wonder,
Cynthia 李怡欣

June 23, 2015

Dear Ancestor,

Like a little girl or an almost illiterate ABC, I have been practicing handwriting.  Writing Pingpu family names over and over -- or rather the Chinese surnames you were forced to take on -- or which you chose to take on as a tactic to avoid discrimination.  It reminds me that my parents took on Anglo names when they first moved here, my dad's name a strange echo of a Confederate general, Robert Lee, the same name on an FBI no-fly list, the routine interrogations at LAX when he returns from Taiwan.  Wooden prow replaced by metal bird: how we have chosen to leave, now and then.  Someone said that immigration is giving up on one's homeland.  We came in the 70s, before martial law was lifted, when Nixon decided, oops, Taiwan isn't China, China is China, and we thought, the Communists are coming!  the Communists are coming! -- a threat which is true even now.  I don't know what prompted that earlier migration, that other moment of complicity with a settler-colonial project that ended up with me as your descendant.  Years of drought, maybe, like this bone-dry California Gabrielino-Tongva land that I love.  Financial incentives by the Dutch, who could not persuade you to till your land for their profit.  Or arriving with the Manchurian Qing, who managed the indigenous people and the Han settlers by pitting us against each other, as even now we are pitted against each other in my heart, ventricles gasping, blood cells fighting each other for oxygen, as even now we are pitted against each other in Taiwan, the DPP wanting to use aboriginal identity for its own political purposes, you call us pai lang in our language, you call us mother-fuckers in yours.

What's in a name?  What's hidden in a name?  Even as your people took on Chinese names, they were still different than ours. 哀, Ai, sorrow.  猴, Hou, monkey.  毒, Du, poison.  Were the names phonetic translations, like those weird Chinese transliterations of foreign names: Mary becomes 瑪麗 (Ma Li).  Or are there traces of meaning -- red, baby chick, poetry  -- that connect to your lost names, our lost names.  Did you agree, in the end, to take the name 李, wood radical Lee, to enter a Han patriarchal lineage, a woman lost in the branches of men, the native roots and brambles of your matrilineal ancestry disappeared from the naming, the graves, the altars, the books, the family genealogy.  I cannot offer incense to you.  I can only speak, haltingly, these names in colonial translation: Yue (月), Hong (紅), Li (力).  Moon.  Red.  Power.

Love,

Cynthia
李怡欣

24 June 2015

Dear Ancestor,

I wish I knew your name.  Your face.  I wish I had a picture.  A marking on a gravestone in the tall grass, worn by monsoon and time.  A mention of your laughter in a long-ago diary.  A song.  Something to hold onto and let me know that you are real.  Today the scholars tell me you are not real: the geneticists and anthropologists argue, waving their righteous flags, funded by government institutions. 

I remember going to get my hair cut with my mother in Taipei, and the hairdresser saying, Is she part American?  Her eyes look different.  My mother was angry and said I was a hundred percent Taiwanese, raised in the U.S..  At the time I thought, bemused and a little hurt, that my foreign clothes and way of being in my body must have shifted her perception, made her see me as part white, since of course that's what American means in Taiwan.  Now I wonder whether she was really seeing your eyes in my face: deep-set and round with the epicanthal fold.  Mistaking one set of barbarians for another.

I've been rethinking Confucianism.  Seeing its tightness.  What was once framed as the oh-so-predictable rebellion of the white-washed second generation American now presents itself as a decolonial act, as working to undo hundreds of years of assimilation to Han culture.  Queering Confucianism.  Family is a fist, squeezing tight as water runs and dribbles out, instead of gently cupping the water, holding it.  Family is a set of lungs shared between conjoined twins: we cannot breathe without each other.  Family is tightly woven silk, the strength of warp and weft: if you cut one thread, the whole thing unravels.  But what was family to you?  I read Jolan Hsieh's ethnography of Pingpu people, and it looks a lot like love marriage: noseflutes playing, young men and women dancing at harvest, an easy approach and retreat, following the ebb and flow of one's desire.  Did my Han ancestor slip into one of these dances?  Did you feel him beside you and take his hand in yours, smiling?  The collision course of history in one simple gesture?  Did he move to your family home, working hard as all immigrants do, to make sure his clothes wouldn't be hung outside the front door, to win your family's approval?  Did you know that he could come or go, that you need only stay together as long as you wished, that divorce and remarriage would be easy and without stigma, that you could come together and drift apart like duckweed floating on the pond's surface, that you could take for granted, as I never have, the right to choose who to love?

Love,
Cynthia

June 25, 2015

Dear Ancestor,

I imagine you wild-eyed dancing

I imagine you with millet and daikon and dirt under your nails

I imagine you with your mother and an earthbellied pot

I imagine you pouring sweet rice wine laughing fullbodied

I imagine your hands reaching into a steaming communal pot

            sweet potato and wild boar cooked together underground

I imagine you diving, a flying fish

            silverslipping in and out of waves

...my imagination stumbles, comes up empty. 

How can I imagine you when I know nothing about you?

A handful of dirt, salt, water.

Speak to me, please.

Cynthia

July 23, 2015

Dear Ancestor,

Many days, as scholars argue in my head, stroking their long beards and waving their green flags, I wonder if you really exist, if you ever existed.  I feel you frowning, shaking your head at your daughter's doubt, at yet another erasure.  This is how genocide works.  So I continue writing and creating around the possibility of your existence -- hints -- detective work -- signs from a dream world -- delving headlong, shaking, into a bloody history that is far bigger than my own blood lineage.

I've been thinking about rainbows.  Somewhere over the.  Longing.  Pot of gold.  Queer leprechauns.  Oxumare dreams sky, snakes his androgynous spine as raindrops spill and shimmer, the jangle of cowry.  Genderqueer child of Oxum and Oxossi.  Birds fly why oh why can't I cross the rainbow bridge to meet you, to meet my lost ancestors.  It's true, my imagination refracts through a blockbuster film, Warriors of the Rainbow.  And yet what hands calloused torn from weaving.  What blood on my hands gripping machete.  What sacrifice do you require for us to be together?  Must I kill the Han in me?  The Seediq say that across the rainbow bridge in the heavenly hunting grounds, your enemy and you are at peace, the conflict forgiven. Would I have to split my head from my body in one clean stroke, to sacrifice myself to you to mend my warring selves, to heal?  But this is not a Pingpu tradition.  It is a headhunter spirituality from a patriarchal society that allowed the Seediq and the Atayal to violently, valiantly resist their Japanese colonizers.  Seediq Bale.  To kill is to become fully human.  And I doubt this was our way, our matrilocal plains people who married the enemy, loved them, maybe.

Rainbows remind me of Hawai'i, where they appear, spontaneously, in mist and light, my father, bigbellied full of mana, so happy at home there.  The possibility of you around every corner.  Maybe I should've suspected we were Pacific Islanders then.  Rainbows lit up my Facebook feed last month, suddenly everyone was queer, Queer Nation, the Supreme Court legalizing same-sex marriage while my radical queer friends protested.  I know marriage is not liberation, but I am tired of critical queers, of negativity and gatekeeping and exclusion and hopelessness.  I want a world lit up by rainbows, rainbows without blood, pirates without pillaging, where the only blood sacrifice is to cut out the internalized colonizer within.

Love,

Cynthia

Queering Abhinaya Assignment 7: Yearning to Bloom

For this assignment I was paired with Cynthia who helped me think the through choreographic ideas and the trajectory of a new piece that I was collaborating on with visual artist, Sayon Syprasoeth, and dancer, Jack Nguoun, for a closing reception of "Roots and Branches," an exhibit featuring contemporary Cambodian visual artists at the Greenly Art Space in Long Beach, CA.

Here is a video of our performance at the closing.
Password:  bloom

Yearning to Bloom from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.

1.  What drew you in?  Or what did you enjoy about the performance?

2.  What would you like to see developed more? 

3.  How did you interpret our use of the masks?  You may not be able to tell, but they had gold on them to mimick the sculpture's texture.  Did it bother you that they are primarily white?  Any ideas about how we might use them more effectively (or not at all).

4.  How did you feel about the interaction of Bharatanatyam, Khmer Classical dance, pedestrian movement, and poetry?  Did anything seem too mime like?

5.  How did you feel about the use of the various music styles, especially the padam "Velavare" (which is the second music). 

6.  What aspects, if any, do you feel might read as "Queering Abhinaya" ?

7.  Do you have any other ideas to offer for growing future performances?  In particular, are there any ways that we could have interacted with the sculpture that you would have been interested to see and that might add to the meaning of the piece?  And did the trajectory feel complete, or do you think something more is needed?

Queering Abhinaya Assignment 6: Shyamala's intergenerational explorations

I was paired with Sandra and we discussed her interest in framing connections between some of our assignments in the German context through writing and perhaps even a video installation of the work.  I believe she was interested in the idea or action of problematizing exoticisms as a common theme for some of the solos, and thus creating a transnational alliance between us. 

I was interested in deepening some of my work.  A few months ago, my mother moved in with me and I found out that I am pregnant, thus, I have been strongly aware of my position between generations.  Thus, the inter-generational nature of the study I did for assignment 4, "alternative translations" seems the most interesting to me to continue at this moment.  For my study, each Post Natyam member interpreted some the words describing how to do the dance movement from a padam that I had learned from my first Bharata Natyam guru, Medha Yodh.  Our interpretations were unusual, quirky, and at at times subversive.   I had planned to thread my favorites of each of our interpretations together into a new version of the padam...  thinking about how a new generation might re-interpret and re-purpose this dance that was passed on to me through Medha, from her guru, Balasaraswati.

Additionally I'm creating a new piece in collaboration with a Cambodian American visual artist,

Sayon Syprasoeuth and a Cambodian American dancer, Jack Nguon.  In relation to the "alternate translations." I'm thinking it would be interesting to see how Jack might interpret the text in his classical Cambodian dance influenced body.  I also have been doing some inter-generational writings that I feel will help inform the piece, either with sound or images.  

Themes exploring: pleasure and discomfort of waiting, transformation, life cycle of seed to flower blossoming/birthing, inter-generational (dis)connections

Below is an image of a sculpture we'll be working with: 

Sculpture by Sayon Syprasoeuth (our costumes hopefully will be similar variations of this)

Texts to draw from:  

Velavare (Padam I learned from Medha Yodh), the gist is about a maiden waiting for her lord.  Perhaps the music itself would be interesting to use.

 Two poems I've written recently:

-->

love letter at week 6

My first signs of you were my queasy belly and your beating heart-

Fast, erratic, a pulsing white light, a beacon of your existence. 

My emotions ran wild.

Your heart in my belly, making it flutter.

My gasping breath making you falter.

The realization that you were all heart was so immense…

This tiny light leading you into the world, before all thought, before all reason, guided only by your inner rhythm.

And as I cradled you in my womb,

Your love, so vast, encompassed me.  

-->

Free-fall at 11 weeks

S/he is tumbling, free-falling except for the pulsing bungee cord of flesh that connects her to me.  Neither of us holding on with our limbs, connected instead from our insides out.

There is no light here to see, all is intuited from behind thinly shut lids.   

He does not feel my singular pain, oblivious to the sacrifices of one, 

but instead is tuned into the rhythms of my breath, the pulsing of my blood, 

and the pull of gravity within an ever changing rotating sphere of existence. 

A packed, but organized, freeway flows between us, 

where ancestors riding water buffalo intermix with sturdy caballeros, 

and still others traverse in dusty covered wagons. 

None are surprised by each others existence, nor by the occasional sighting 

of never before seen modes of transportation passing at lightening speed. 

Testing her strength and agility, 

each movement is magnified in tight quarters. 

Falling, twisting, turning until he bounces 

against the soft womb walls in a soft reverberating, rebound. 

Our bodies, united together, 

share unfathomable mysteries, 

that despite our interconnection, 

will lead to unavoidable separation.

 Feedback:

1.  What ideas/images stand out to you, especially ones that might inspire movement or visual images/actions, from...

a. the sculpture

b the week 6 poem

c. the week 11 poem 

2.  Do you have any thoughts about ways to tie or layer the sculpture, poems and Padam together?  

3.  Any other thoughts?

Cyn's Assignment #3: triple weave

For my assignment, I decided to do a textual choreography that investigates (my) Taiwanese aboriginal and Chinese colonizer heritage and histories.   The piece uses three streams of text: the left column is by Atayal (泰雅/Taiya) poet Walis Nokan, the middle column are personal musings/memories written by myself, and the right column consists of Qing Dynasty colonial travel writings from the 1600s, sourced from Emma Teng's Taiwan's Imagined Geography: Chinese Colonial Travel Writing and Pictures, 1683-1895.  For ease of reading, click on each page for a larger image.

Cyn's Creative Response #2: Lexie Strikes in the Locker Room

I’ve been having some challenges doing this assignment, partially because our script for “Super Ruwaxi: Origins” is still shifting around quite a lot, and so I haven’t been sure whether it made sense to stage a scene that might get cut.  Thus I’ve decided to use the feedback process to help brainstorm visual looks or staging approaches for one of the scenes in the script, which takes place at school.  As you read, keep in mind that there are only two performers – Shy and myself – though there are multiple characters.

To give some context for this scene, it takes place at Ruwaxi’s elite prep school.  The group of popular girls at the school is called the Lipstick Brigade, headed by Lexie Luthora, with her hangers-on, Vanna Valley White (an air-headed blonde), and Minx (a cunning and jealous brunette).  Lexie is the trans-female version of Fedora Boy.  Lexie now works at the Gender Police (where Fedora Boy also worked) and has gone under cover as a high school student to try to find and destroy her nemesis, Ruwaxi.  Lexie’s name is a reference to Lex Luthor, Superman’s nemesis.  Lexie also parallels Brihannala, the female (or hijra, depending on the story) version of Arjuna when he is in hiding in the Mahabharata.  ‘Nana (short for Banana) was Ruwaxi’s childhood best friend (and first female lover, though this back-story will probably not be included in the script), but their paths have diverged since Nana opted for the assimilated, materialistic route while Ruwaxi took the nerdy, model minority route.

Also, at the moment we are imagining that Shy will play Lexie and I will play Arjuna throughout the piece, so that we play each other’s nemesis.  We are also interested in creating a distinct visual look for each world: school, home, club, Urvashi’s world.  Some preliminary visual thoughts are indicated in red. 

Lexie Strikes in the Locker Room

Lights up on the girls' locker room at Middle Kingdom High with sounds of showers and chattering girls.  Ruwaxi is deep in thought, distracted by new ideas for a paper.

RUWAXI

Ooh, I could write an extra credit paper on queer tropes in Hindu mythology through the lenses of feminist-of-color theory and Roland Barthes’ Mythologies.  

(Absent-mindedly, she slips out of her gym clothes, tucks her towel around her body, making her way towards the communal shower, soap and shampoo in hand.  Mentally thanking her mother for making her wear flip-flops, she lets her body relax into the hot stream of water, humming a seductive melody that she seemed to recall from a dream.)

(A bar of soap slides across the bathroom floor, hitting her flip flop. As RUWAXI kneels down to pick it up, LEXIE enters with the LIPSTICK BRIGADE just behind her.)

Lexie

Ahem.

(Ruwaxi looks up.)

Vanna

Ruwaxi, give her the soap already!

Ruwaxi

(visual thought bubble -- I'm thinking the following words would be expressed through imagery, not words) The suds cling to her pale pink areolas...her body so ripe yet perfectly toned...

Lexie

[in a dangerous whisper] What are you looking at?

Minx

[calculating] Yeah, Ruwaxi, do you like what you see or something?

(Lexie’s eyes widen at the sound of Ruwaxi’s name, then narrow with malice.)

Vanna

Oh my god, Ruwaxi, are you seriously a dyke?  I thought you were too busy studying to think about sex!

Lexie

So…you are Ruwaxi.  The little Oriental flower who turned out to be a hairy armpitted...

Ruwaxi

[fearful and embarrassed] I’m not looking at anything!  Sorry…

Lexie

(snaps her fingers) Shave her.

(Lexie pulls her diamond razor from her hair and grabs Ruwaxi by the wrist.  The rest of the Lipstick Brigade gathers, forcing Ruwaxi down to the slimy, tiled shower floor. Ruwaxi tries to stand up, to call forth her righteous anger, but she is gripped with fear, and as she lifts her arms, diamond flashes of razor sharpness slashed lightning-quick in a blur of hot steam, tig dha bony fingers holding Ruwaxi down bruisingly tight, dig…dig… slashing flesh and scraping away hair.  Ruwaxi is left in a heap on the shower floor, her curly armpit hair clogging the drain, blood mixing with water…)

(As a possible visual rendition of the above scene, I’m imagining my live body tangled in a typical cartoon fight sequence, perhaps a simple animation, complete with little curlicues, exclamation points, and sound effects (bam, pow, zap, etc.), mixed in with anti-lesbian epithets and bols.  For example: ouch!  I’LL &%*#*%^ TEACH YOU!  tig dha SLASH!  diga ZAP! $%^&! YOU WANT SOME OF THIS?  diga diga thai LESBIAN!  POW! diga thai BIFFF!  DYKE!  SLASH! tig dha CUNT-LOVER!) 

 (LEXIE exits with the LIPSTICK BRIGADE behind her. Nana enters after they’ve left.)

‘Nana

Are you okay, Ruwaxi?  [helps her get up and supports her] Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.

QUESTIONS:

(1) How might you imagine staging this visually given that there are only two performers?  (Options might include live feed, simple animation, pre-recorded video, audience interaction, etc.) 

(2) The blatant violence of this scene bothers me because it seems to be missing the cleverness and humorous political pointedness of the 15-minute version of the piece.  Do you have thoughts as to ways to make it both serious and light? 

(3) Thoughts about what kind of sound/music might support this scene?

(4) Any suggestions to tighten or strengthen the writing?   Other thoughts?