Please give to the Бабушка | BAb(oo)shka Kickstarter
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/annalublina/babooshka-at-the-14th-street-y
Бабушка | BAb(oo)shka is inspired by my Babushka’s stories. All through my life, I’ve heard countless tales of how challenging life was for my mom and Babushka as Jews in the Soviet Union. When I was a teenager, I would roll my eyes. In the last few years, I realized that my skepticism had something to do with the flattening process of storytelling. Those experiences of anti-semitism in the USSR may have been incredibly raw for Babushka and Mama, but they were simply abstract images to me. I wondered: how could my experimental puppetry/theater practice provide a framework through which to explore this process of mis-translation? What is lost and gained in this evolution from lived experience to fable-like anecdote?
Бабушка | BAb(oo)shka is the product of these questions. The performance begins with my mother and Babushka telling stories in Russian. The piece then unfolds into three overlapping translations including English re-performance, experimental dance, and puppet folk tale—each infused with specific aesthetic influences that trace the history of the avant-garde. Since this initial idea emerged nearly 2 years ago, I have been lucky to explore this project through The Hamilton Project at BarnArts, the Cojeco Blueprint Fellowship supporting Russian-Jewish culture, the St. Anns’ Warehouse PuppetLab (where I developed puppets for the piece), the Undiscovered Countries BlastOff Lab, and the Sokoloff Arts Fellowship.
Now, I am thrilled that the project will be part of the fall LIFE + DEATH season at Theater at the 14th Street Y, one of New York City’s leading institutions dedicated to Jewish culture. The culminating evening-length version of Бабушка | BAb(oo)shka will have its world premiere September 26–October 5, 2019.
