FOUND IN TRANSLATION: SKINLESS Comes to Pao Arts Center

Found in Translation, a collaboration between Asian American Theatre Artists of Boston (AATAB), CHUANG Stage, and Pao Arts Center, is a series of multilingual staged readings and community gatherings activating Chinatown. Since 2021, Found in Translation has amplified the power and complexities of being multilingual, immigrants, or identifying as Asian American in Greater Boston; these performances connect the pan-Asian community through conversations about race, language, identity, and experiences when it comes to belonging and a collective more just future. The second play of the current Found in Translation season, SKINLESS, is written by liqing xu and directed by Tianding He.

SKINLESS reimagines the ancient Chinese legend The White Snake as a queer, gender-bending modern fairy tale.

Two snake demons, White and Green, come to Earth to experience being human. White transforms into a human and immediately falls passionately in love, but Green cannot successfully become human. Instead, Green's soul gets separated from their body, and they are cursed to inhabit different human and non-human bodies. In each new form that Green takes, they chase both White and the recognition of their own carnal desire. Green's feelings for White become blurred through these experiments with embodiment, and Green gets closer to their true self, which is a self that perhaps does not align with any particular body at all.

Blending text with music and projection, this play creates a dynamic visual world where the crossing of boundaries between species, genders, and sexualities, takes place through inner and outer transformation.

Playful and mysterious, SKINLESS examines the fluid and relative nature of identity. It shows the pitfalls and joys of being perceived or not perceived, and ultimately, is a queer coming-of-age story that's also about the power of reinvention.

The Found in Translation Series is supported by the New England Foundation for the Arts' Public Art for Spatial Justice program, with funding from the Barr Foundation.

WHERE: Pao Arts Center at 99 Albany Street, Boston

PERFORMANCE DATES:

Friday, November 17 at 7:00 pm

Saturday, November 18 at 2:00 pm and 7:00 pm

PRICE: FREE, suggested donation $10

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