Theater Offensive Creating Korean American Play

Call for Choreographers:

Looking for a choreographer for a new piece called SWAN, written by Sophie Kim, as part of a residency with The Theater Offensive. Sophie Kim is a lyricist/librettist, performance poet, and filmmaker. You can check out her work at thesophiekim.com. SWAN is an experimental play that will have a work in progress showing in January 2023. It’s a reimagining of Swan Lake about queer transmasculine Asian-American identity, parasocial relationships, and detransition YouTube. Sophie is looking for a choreographer, based in the Boston area, to collaborate with. This is a paid position. Ideally Sophie love to work with an Asian-American transgender choreographer, particularly a transmasc choreographer or a Korean-American choreographer, but is open to working with any QTBIPOC. Sophie is particularly interested in contemporary and lyrical choreographers, but is open to all styles!

If interested, please contact Sophie Kim, playwright,: sophiekim@college.harvard.edu

Please cc Weiwen Balter, producer, at The Theater Offensive: weiwen@thetheateroffensive.org

Synopsis (+ how dance fits in)

SWAN is a fantastical dark-comedy-slash-ghost story and a queer, Asian American re-imagining of Swan Lake. The play follows Richard, a teenage Korean-American closeted transmasc who is forced to confront his desire to come out and embrace his identity after being visited by Swan, a mysterious voice who haunts his dreams. Swan leads Richard through eerie landscapes that blend dream and reality, showing him the futures he could have if he came out–and the one he’s doomed to if he doesn’t. Desperate to tamp down these desires he didn’t even know he had, Richard turns to, of all things, detransition Youtube. Aiden, a white thirty-something who claims to have also received dream visions from Swan, but to have gotten rid of his visions and overcome his transmasc identity, tries to convince Richard to stay in the closet and live a “normal” life, while Swan forces Richard to confront his fear of the future, again and again. Richard is pushed to the breaking point, and must weigh the consequences of coming out to his family and giving up everything he’s ever known, with his need to be understood, desired, and loved. SWAN asks the question: If you had to give up everything you knew, everyone you loved, to be something you didn’t understand…would you do it?

SWAN utilizes contemporary and lyrical dance to explore and derealize gender identity/performance, race, and queer relationships. Words are so often inadequate as a medium of self-expression; by utilizing dance, the play explores other languages that we might use to articulate our identities and desires. In addition, moving through space and being perceived are highly charged and gendered acts; SWAN aims to use dance to deeply examine these acts.

Theater Offensive’s Mission:

liberation.

To present liberating art by, for, and about queer and trans people of color that transcends artistic boundaries, celebrates cultural abundance, and dismantles oppression.