RASGOS ASIÁTICOS | Performance and Installation

English, Spanish and Chinese | On-going

An on-going project by Virginia Grise, created in collaboration with designer Tanya Orellana, rasgos asiáticos traces the diasporic journeys and hidden histories of Chinese communities in Mexico and along the US-MX border through a hybrid, convivial, approach to storytelling that includes a site-responsive installation, communal dinners, public talks and community workshops.

Investigating the ways that scenic design can participate in story gathering, we imagine future productions of rasgos asiáticos in an open field, an abandoned warehouse, a Chinese grocery store, in the middle of the desert, creating environments the audience must walk through and discover—sites for political and personal excavation in conversation with the histories of sites and the layered identities that create them. Each site will bring new elements to the installation, both physical and philosophical. As the installation continues to build at each site, we will design a process of engagement that leads to the additive design of the installation, an investigation of co-creation with community and site. 

rasgos asiáticos premiered at DiverseWorks in Houston, Texas and is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation Fund Project co-commissioned by CalArts Center for New Performance, Valencia; DiverseWorks in partnership with MECA, Houston; Fulcrum Theater, New York; Performance in the Borderlands, Phoenix and NPN with support from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Ford Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Originally developed by CalArts Center for New Performance and created with additional support from the Princess Grace Foundation Special Project Grant, the National Association for Latino Art and Culture, the MAP Fund, supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Writer/Director Lab at Soho Rep Theater, the Asuncion Award for Queer Playwrighting at Pregones Theater and California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities.