CASTING/SEEKING - First or Second Generation Immigrants for new virtual supper club series, “Dinner Bell”. In these times of social distancing and quarantine, many of us can feel disconnected to each other and our roots. How do we define family and home now that we are isolated from where we began? How has our relationship to food changed, and our definition of family, as we have aged into this new world?
Dinner Bell is a new supper club series that brings together the art of storytelling with the art of cooking. It will feature first and second generation immigrants as Story-Chefs, preparing and cooking a meal that they ate as children while telling stories they heard from their family members growing up, and how those stories influenced their definitions of home and family now as adults. Each Story-Chef will provide a list of the ingredients, prep work instructions, and written instructions beforehand, and then on the date of the event, cook live on Facebook!
From creator Jaq Seifert - “I’m third generation Syrian-American, and I can remember sitting in my grandmother's kitchen as she made kibbeh or fasoolya and hearing stories of my great grandmother and her escape from Syria and immigration to America. And it made me wonder about other stories and how those might be able to show a connectedness between all humanity as we struggle to define home Often the families we grew up in are not the ones we share as adults, and our relationship to home and the kitchen shifts as we grow. Prior to this being a virtual experience, the hope was to have this as a live event, where at the end of the cooking portion, everyone sat down and ate together, and the audience had the opportunity to share their own stories as they shared the meal. Now in the time of social distancing, it's taking on an added component, that of exploring how we connect to each other, now that we can't connect physically. By cooking the meal, and hearing the stories, my hope is that folks at home are getting not just an opportunity to try a new recipe, but also understand the tradition and culture that it came from, and see how much we actually share in terms of our relationship to home.”
Compensation - Each show is a suggestion donation of $10 per viewer, or pay what viewers can, to be split evening between Story-Chef’s and the company. In the future, grants will be applied for as well as this becoming a ticketed event for when we are all able to congregate in person again.
If interested in being a Story-Chef, please email
info@subversionproductions.com with the subject DINNER BELL, and include how you identify (LGBTQ+ folks also encouraged to submit!), as well as the meal you would like to cook, and a little bit about your relationship to food, family, home, and connectedness. What draws you to this project?
The first Dinner Bell will hopefully be on April 15th. Submissions open on a rolling basis and shows will continue weekly!
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