The Grown Woman Show: Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Description

The Grown Woman Show is a fearless, sexy and powerful one-woman show about a long-term incest survivor and a femme of color making love, family and heartbreak within queer and trans of color communities. Using storytelling, spoken word, ritual and movement, Leah traces one year in her life as she leaves her long-term white partner and returns to finding love and trouble in a series of new lovers of color – while simultaneously attempting to reconnect with the family she hasn’t talked to in a decade.

The daughter of a Sri Lankan father and a Irish-Ukrianian mother, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha was raised in Worcester, Mass, an eastern rust belt city known for dirty water and busted buildings. A scholarship baby from the age of 8, she moved to New York at 18 to get a BA from Eugene Lang College / New School for Social Research, but ended up learning a lot more from the student, squatter, spoken word, women of color and queer/trans of color movements. She left New York for Toronto in 1997 hoping to no longer be the only Sri Lankan in the room, and succeeded! She has performed her spoken word all over North America , in front of audiences at Yale and Oberlin and at immigrant rights rallies and benefits for queer youth resource centers. She is the author of Consensual Genocide (TSAR, 2006), is a frequent contributor to Bitch and Colorlines magazines and has had work anthologized in Colonize This!, With a Rough Tongue: Femmes Write Porn, Without a Net, Dangerous Famillies, Geeks, Misfits and Outlaws , and A Girl's Guide to Taking Over the World . She works to create a Sri Lanka free from war, multinational corporations and queer, women's and cultural oppression with Blood Memory: A Sri Lankan Storytelling Project. Leah has taught writing to queer, trans and Two Spirit youth at Supporting Our Youth Toronto's Pink Ink program for the past four years, work that won her a City Of Toronto Community Service Award in 2004. She produces queer of color spoken word shows through her company, brownstargirl productions, and is the co-creator of the Asian Arts Freedom School , an arts/activism school for API youth in Toronto . She loves her kids, the color fuschia, and being a revolutionary high femme Sri Lankan role model and survivor.

More Info

Link

http://975howard.com/

Call

415 885 4006 (Box Office)