Make Banana Cry by Andrew Tay and Stephen Thompson

*Part of Saturday evening ticket deal. If you book this performance with BESIDE, and the Festival Closing Party you can watch/attend them all for £25 or £20 concession price.

Make Banana Cry is a critical and destabilizing dance performance co-signed by Andrew Tay and Stephen Thompson. The work questions Asian stereotypes while examining the transmission of cultural identity. A diverse cast of Canadian artists approach the issue by exploring Western myths concerning the “Asian Fantasy”, eventually moving forward to propose other ways of “being together.”

As aesthetic embodiments of “Asian-ness” become more predominant in Western art and pop culture, the artists share a desire to reflect on these representations and explode the mechanisms that create these categorizations within today’s appropriative landscape. Make Banana Cry is a continuous barrage of identity politics, a durational parade which contemplates the problematics of universal “Western” pop culture while drawing on the artistic background of each of the invited artists.

Co Directors: Andrew Tay and Stephen Thompson
Visual installation: Dominique Petrin
Collaborators / performers: Ellen Furey, Hanako Hoshimi-Caines, Dana Michel, Simon Portigal

This performance contains nudity.

Suitable for ages 16+