Photo credit: © Val Bah
| Interdisciplinary artist and writer Kama La Mackerel interweaves poetry, storytelling, dance, femme tongues and broken colonial languages in a solo performance that is at once personal and political. ZOM-FAM (meaning “man-woman” or “transgender” in Mauritian Kreol) narrates the story of a gender-creative child growing up in the 80s and 90s on the plantation island of Mauritius. |
| ZOM-FAM is composed of coming-of-age stories of a gender-creative child growing up in the 80s and 90s on a plantation island. Multiply-voiced and imbued with complex storytelling, ZOM-FAM enunciates a multiplicity of movements within a fluid narrative that brings together ancestral voices, femme tongues, broken colonial languages and a tender queer subjectivity, all of which grapple with the legacy of plantation servitude. |
The piece deploys the family home as a literary and scenographic space onto which is mapped the plantation island, making of the home-(is)land a performative and political trope that exposes the leakages of the colonial condition into the intimacy of the home. Emerging from a creative process in poetry, storytelling, song, ritual, dramaturgy and dance (Kathak, contemporary dance and Mauritian sega), the work invites its audience onto an intimate journey into the literary, spatial, choreographic and scenographic vocabularies of a subjectivity that is rich, multiple and hybrid— a voice that is at once queer and decolonial, African and South-Asian, masculine and feminine, contemporary and ancestral.
ZOM-FAM interweaves narratives that bring together ancestral voices, femme tongues, broken colonial languages and a tender queer subjectivity, all of which are grappling with the legacy of plantation servitude.
| “I explore ancestral loss— as the loss of bodies, histories, cultures, languages, genders, knowledge systems and spiritual practices— in order to rewrite the marginalized and silenced voice in contemporary contexts of global imperialism.” – Kama La Mackerel, director |
| ZOM-FAM was also published as a collection of lyric poetry by Metonymy Press in September 2020. |
CREDITS
Dramaturgy Advisors: Mathieu Leroux, Sophie Gee
Choreography Advisors: Andrew Tay, Rhodnie Désir
Vocal Coach: Teiya Kasahara, Kathy Kennedy
External Eye: Tawiah BenEben Mfoafo-M’Carthy
Light Design: Jon Cleveland
Technical Director: Jon Cleveland
Sound Design: Evan Stepanian
Scenography: Nalo Soyini Bruce
Scenography Assistant: Michael Fanfan
Production Manager: Josh Marchesini
ZOM-FAM is a co-production of MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels)
Kama La Mackerel is a recipient of MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels)’s Alliance program
IN BRIEF
WHAT?
ZOM-FAM
by Kama La Mackerel
WHEN?
06-07-08-09-10 OCT
7:30PM
WHERE?
MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels)
3680 Jeanne-Mance
HOW MUCH?$10 (Single rate season 20.21)* $0 — Accompanying person for spectators with a disability
m-a-i.qc.ca/en/billetterie
514-982-3386
