In Your Own Words
In Your Own Words was an experimental intercultural performance project with international students from Macquarie University. It was an ambulatory event, which was staged in multiple languages in nooks , crannies and open spaces culminating in a Bollywood dance finale on the sound stage of the old film and television school at Macquarie University.
Based on a concept by Yana Taylor and drawing from Sally’s participation in the Directors Laboratory at the Centre for Performance Research in Wales, the process of generating material for the piece involved a number of exercises to draw out and make performative, stories of departure, arrival and identity in Australia from the students themselves.
Using name-games, confessions to camera, letters home on tape, sensory journeys and chat-show-style interviews as well as particular musical and dance traditions contributed by students from Mexico, Pakistan Malaysia and China, the piece both empowered the students and drew an audience into the experience of living inside a “foreign skin”.
Project details
4 August 2008 Macquarie University
