Seaweeds
"Blurring the lines between cinema and live performance, Seaweeds re-imagines the lost ending of The Toll of the Sea, the 1922 silent film that introduced screen legend Anna May Wong (1905–1961) in the first-ever Technicolor motion picture. In Michelle Sui’s bold re-envisioning, actors audition for Wong herself, who breaks free from the script and takes off to Paris, Tijuana, and Zurich in search of her on-again, off-again girlfriend.
Past/present and onscreen/offscreen selves begin to blur as performers slip between roles and realities. A queer Asian cast conjures a world where time folds in on itself and stories are rewritten and reclaimed. Merging live performance and music with cinematic fragments, Sui’s Seaweeds creates a layered homage to Wong and the roles she played, as well as those she never got to play."
MICHELLE SUI is an American artist, performer, composer, and director. They began their career in New York City creating experimental operas, dance scores, site-responsive performances, moving-image theater, and immersive multimedia compositions which have been presented internationally. Their work exists at the intersection of music, film, choreography, installation, oral histories, and new technologies, and draws upon the body and voice in relation to cinematic icons, language in translation, public spaces, and the dislocations and reconstitutions of memory. Their work has received support from Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Sundance, Rauschenberg Foundation, Center for Asian American Media, California Arts Council, New York Foundation for the Arts, The Mellon Foundation, and Bang on a Can.