The Body Is Made of Strings at Under St Marks Theater

The Body—our nameless narrator in this one-person play—is a hypochondriac. Or at least that’s what the world tells him when he confesses his symptoms. His hair seems to be suddenly falling, strange cysts appear on his testicles, and he can’t remember basic details like the name of his roommate’s dog or how he got to New York.

A queer immigrant in the current climate of dehumanization, immigration crackdown, and government surveillance, his world is nebulous, unanchored, teeming with worry. He is lost, paranoid, and the closest thing he has to a tether is a guy who loves him, but casually. The world around him consists of surreal encounters, moments of fantasia, and shaky impermanent dreams.

As he navigates the city—threesomes, protests, nightclubs, cemeteries—time begins to unravel around him. Past and future bleed into the present. With each trauma, he is hurled into memories and past lives, from familial snapshots and childhood anxieties to memories of a war zone and historical vignettes of colonial violence.

As he regains his memories in ebbs and flows of amnesia and clarity, memory itself becomes both duty and burden. It becomes something he is holding on to for dear life and for sacred purpose, and also a weight that seems to break him, and the world around him, wide open.