Moderated by Jamil Khoury
Date
April 13, 2014
Venue
Pierce Hall at the Historic Chicago Temple Building
Immediately following the performance of Brahman/i on April 13, 2014, Silk Road Rising held a panel discussion moderated by Silk Road Rising's artistic director, Jamil Khoury.
Brahman/i is a fictional story written by a female playwright of mixed Indian and Bulgarian ancestry, told from the perspective of a South Asian American intersex person, and performed by a South Asian Muslim queer woman. While it has received rave reviews from audiences and critics alike, it also raises challenging questions about identity and representation, art and authenticity—questions that are increasingly being echoed in today's media. In just the past few weeks, for instance, reactions to Jared Leto's Oscar-winning performance in Dallas Buyers Club and to Amazon's new original series Transparent have provoked heated debates about actors portraying "the other" when they are not the other themselves.
With this panel discussion we intend to probe and explore questions of identity and representation as they pertain to storytelling, both historically and in our rapidly changing, ever-globalizing world. Is it okay for a straight actor to play a gay or bisexual character? Can a white author write about the black experience? Can a cisgendered person portray a transgender person, or a Muslim portray a Hindu? In other words: who gets to tell whose story and how? Where are the boundaries? Who sets the boundaries? And how do we bring about empathy and cultural acceptance without engaging in cultural appropriation and mimicry?
Featured Panelists:
- Pidgeon Pagonis, Intersex Activist
- Mary Anne Mohanraj, Author, Clinical Assistant Professor of fiction and literature and Associate Director of Asian and Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago
- Mohamed Mehdi, Assistant Professor of Humanities and Philosophy at Oakton.
Guest Respondents:
- Wendy Doniger, Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago
- Nisha Kommattam, Lecturer at University of Chicago