Ghazal Partou

In Sundry Languages

               

Director: Art Babayants

Location: Fairview Library Theatre, Toronto, Canada,2019

Performed by: Art Babayants, Yury Ruzhyev, Lavinia Salinas, Ziying Gloria Gao, Ghazal Partou, Pooria Fard, Vik Hovhanisian

Production Dramaturge: Myrto Koumarianos

Producer: Tyler Kruspe, Gregory Guzik, Kia Salimian

Community Producer: Syeda, Luba Cherny, Maria Kordoni

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In Sundry Languages” is a multilingual theatre experiment conducted by the Toronto Laboratory Theatre with a diverse group of performers, including recent immigrants to Canada and refugees. Structured as a series of loose vignettes, the stories told on stage are about immigration, displacement, hybrid identities, constant learning, and unlearning. As the scenes and stories unfurl, the audience is confronted with their biases about the languages of each other, laughing and crying in turn at cultural and linguistic stereotypes. The multilingual performers use and abuse various dialects of Mandarin, Arabic, Russian, English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese, among many others. While the actors never translate what they are saying, the message is translated across the complex physicality of the performers and video dramaturgy. Audience members are invited to reflect on the multiple subjectivities that make up the voices of Toronto residents and also on the subjectivity of their own voices and perceptions.