Fish Eyes

I'm running quite short of time this morning, so I'll keep this short.  I am just back from seeing The Fish Eyes Trilogy at Factory Theatre.  It's a very strong piece that fuses classical Indian dance (as well as Indian dance set to pop music) and theatre.  The three pieces focuses on 3 different students in Port Moody, BC (two of South Asian heritage and one Caucasian).  They interact in different ways (generally somewhat negatively), but generally it is the boys that really set them up against each other.  The pieces were written by and performed by Anita Majumdar, who takes on all the roles, effortlessly shifting from the girls to their boyfriends and then to the Aunty characters who are teaching the Indian girls to dance.  There is a lot going on in the pieces and I'll probably be thinking about this for a while.  I would encourage anyone who is even a bit curious about them to go check it out.  This is the first opportunity to see all pieces in one evening and in this particular order (in previous outings Fish Eyes had gone first).  I think this code will work for a discount for tonight's (Thurs Oct. 5) performance but not sure: MEENA20.

I didn't realize it, but there was a talk back, and Anita came out afterwards and talked a bit about different issues.  One thing that was interesting was that Port Moody (where she grew up) was so white that the ethnic students felt it was safer to assimilate rather than offer up a single target to the haters.  This was very different from Surrey, for example, where the schools were largely Asian and it was more of a personal choice whether to hang in predominantly white or Asian or mixed cliques.  I am not sure there will be more talk backs through the course of the run or not, but I wouldn't let that stop you from checking out the show.  The only drawback was that it was a long evening (particularly with the talk back) and I am tired, but I still have to run to get to work.