The Shipment at The Cultch: Vancity Culture Lab

A provocative comedy to shake the "woke" Directed by: Kayvon Khoshkam and Omari Newton Featuring: Carl Kennedy, Chris Francisque, Kiomi Pyke. Adrian Neblett and Andrew Creightney ABOUT THE SHIPMENT: The New York Times says "Cultural images of black America are tweaked, pulled and twisted like Silly Putty". Theatre Mania gives the THE SHIPMENT 5 stars: "An insightful piece about black identity politics that is daring, provocative, and very, very funny.” Timeout agrees it's "Discomforting but viscously goofy". Playwright Young Jean Lee gave herself the most uncomfortable challenge she could imagine: to make—as a Korean-American—a show about black identity. The show was made in collaboration with an all-black cast and is divided into two parts. The first half is structured like a minstrel show—dance, stand-up routine, sketches, and a song—and was written to address the stereotypes the cast members felt they had to deal with as black performers. For the second half of the show, Lee asked the actors to come up with roles they’d always wanted to play, and wrote a naturalistic comedy in response to their requests. In THE SHIPMENT, Lee uses her razor-sharp and unsettling humour to upend the surface stereotypes and tropes of African Americans that permeate our media, entertainment industry, and the dominant culture (aka White-framed) narrative. Audiences are confronted with clichés, distortions, and brilliant sleights of hand that force us to go beyond the lampoon and shift the lens through which we perceive race in order to confront our own bias.