Review: LIVING ON THE HYPHEN Hits Hard in Downtown Austin, TX

LIVING ON THE HYPHEN, the creative and original brain-child of Leng Wong and Anu Naimpally, danced, sang and acted it's way into the prestigious Rollins Theater at The Long Center of the Performing Arts last weekend. This piece of experimental theatre presented hard-hitting questions about our cultural differences and the mysterious 'no man's land' of "Hyphen". Hyphen quite literally means: a punctuation mark - one used especially to divide or to compound words, word elements, or numbers. Director Leng Wong said it best, "Using the vehicle of humor and various performance art forms, I want to illuminate our commonality of being different". This difference more specifically are the words divided by a single hyphen.The opposite of "hyphen-less" or being without hyphen is slightly touched upon, but the biggest element in Wong's and Naimpally's work is the interpretation of how culturally a "hyphen" separates us, divides us and defines us. Following Leng Wong's toothbrush lady through hyphen land, we meet other characters, with or without hyphens telling their story of the experiences their hyphen has bestowed upon them. Faces change, locations change but the overall theme of the characters straddling cultural identities and the weight of their hyphen, leaves the audience wondering how to cope with these realities. Having been written and performed by the ensemble, the storyline presented many questions for the audience regarding each character. While many questions are raised, only a few were actually answered regarding the players and the biggest being left to the audience: "What is my hyphen?".

Asian-American, Mexican-American, Indian-American - the stage was set with a vast group of faces and experiences. This experimental type of theatre was refreshing to watch with many different people striving towards communicating their personal struggles through art with a topic not always politically correct. Each character has a different hyphen, and each are explored and relayed in a way the audience yearns to relate to. However, with such a large ensemble coming together to create a two-act performance, there needed to be a central voice. This was somewhat presented from director Leng Wong's character, toothbrush lady, but failed to have enough impact on the audience's understanding of the underlying story. The storyline of each character presenting their hyphens through different forms of art was interesting and worked well in specific spots, but otherwise felt discombobulated. Additionally, exploring such heavy topics through comedy proved difficult for many of the actors, as their jokes fell flat. Most of the comedy felt like overhearing an inside joke to which the punchline wasn't funny. However, one comedic highlight was present by SOUMYA N ASHOK when she had a very lively fight, screaming and standing her ground to her extremely supportive (and extremely imaginary) husband. This brought a smile to the ladies in the audience, and touched upon how navigating relationships can also define us individually. JAY BYRD also had some humorous moments presenting the juxtaposition as to why he felt hyphen-less as a self-described "white guy" in America.

Looking at the more serious characters presented, JESUS I. VALLES-MORALES performed spoken word pieces telling of his arrival in America and presenting his hyphen as an object distancing him from his heritage. His poetic performance displayed his knowledge of vocal technique and story telling - his spoken word pieces were exceptionally touching. The enormous traditional Chinese-themed dragon toggled between being fascinating and awkward to watch. JEFFERY DA'SHADE JOHNSON voiced the dragon, which resulted in a very creative turn of events. Presented in such a shocking and touching way, when the dragon is revealed as an African-American, Johnson finished the show with a moving speech about his vivid experiences that he wished to pass along to his son. The most powerful moment in the show is Wong's realization that the dragon which has followed her is not out to get her, but rather is simply a man she can now see.

With a quick weekend of performances, this show left a lasting impression of a multicultural tale of what divides us and defines us. Austin Dance India & Lucky Chaos Productions dared to present such and experimental and ensemble-driven piece to so many different walks of life. Whether it was dancing, singing, or acting this production is thought provoking, and forces us all to answer the question: "What is my hyphen?". For me, I would classify myself as a Fun Theatre-Loving-American - hyphens are for each of us to decide. Their definition is ultimately a weight we carry, but they don't need to define us, nor should the hyphens or dragons others attach to us divide our experiences. LIVING ON THE HYPHEN captures the empathy in our culture and proceeds without apology.

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