December 1, 2009
By Dennis Foster Mickley
Who are we?
The question of identity has been a perpetual struggle within art, as the mind seeks to unravel puzzles of blood and soul. A new series of plays from Chicago's Silk Road Theater plans to turn that formula upside down by beginning with the smallest and most integral biological element: the human genome.
The DNA Trail's seven writers all took extensive DNA tests with no idea where the results would lead, but expecting a springboard towards the question of who, precisely, are they? These tests formulate new and integral roles in the modern question of identity, said Jamil Khoury, Silk Road Theater's artistic director and author of one of the seven plays.
“What does it mean to share DNA with others? What does it mean to take a DNA test? What is ethnicity? What is Americanness? These are questions of weight and relevance that will only become more important,” Khoury said.
Each of the seven writers approached these questions in different ways. Khoury chose to focus on the sociology and politics of ancestry, a “story about the tensions of New America for a city filled with New Americans,” while fellow writer Elizabeth Wong infused her experience with humor.
The California based playwright wrote “Finding Your Inner Zulu,” which she describes as “a vertically challenged high school hoops phenom takes a wild ride inside DNA to turn on the tall gene.”
While all the plays are disparate, Khoury hopes that they will illustrate a common humanity that speaks to Chicago's multicultural audience.
Both writers found that the source material encouraged divergent themes. Creating art out of science proved not a hindrance, but fertile imaginative grounds with more overlap than expected.
“I learned that science and art shares a tremendous common ground. Both are often marginalized and suspect in American culture, and both share many of the same enemies - enemies of inquiry tend to also be the enemies of artistic expression,” Khoury said.
Wong's experience with the DNA test was so powerful that she came away with a set design resolution: to visually recreate the grandeur of the double helix onstage.
“To decipher the DNA code, the blueprint of us, is to know both the past, to glimpse the future, and thereby control one's own destiny. If I ever felt powerless, this science is empowerment,” she said. “I left the workshop overwhelmed by the personal implications, but also mesmerized by the beauty and eloquence of our construction.”