Itch, 20-minute performance.
Complaint lives in the body.
Itch is a spoken performance structured as an open letter to my mother.
Drawing on personal recollections of living with allergy, the work explores bodily reactions as forms of complaint that precede or exceed language.
Through rash, constriction and inflammation, the allergic body registers encounters it cannot tolerate.
The performance places these experiences in relation to industrial food production, medical care and expectations of adaptation and endurance. It asks how responses often dismissed as excessive sensitivity might offer situated knowledge about the conditions in which we live.
Moving between intimate address and systemic critique, Itch considers the body as a living archive of exposure, dependency and resistance.
Photo credit Arianna Cavalensi and Anne Lakeman
Special thanks to Ksenia Perek for performance mentoring
Costume design by Irina Djojoatmodjo
