BORDER/CLASH: A Litany of Desires

Border/Clash: A Litany of Desires

The depth of its anger gives "Border/Clash: A Litany of Desires" an urgency often lacking in the theater's glut of one-person shows. Slam poet Staceyann Chin, who played Broadway in "Def Poetry Jam," recounts her life as a half-black/half-Chinese lesbian in Jamaica, but her memories of first kisses and hate crimes are more than nostalgia. Jamaican lesbians and "chi-chi men" are routinely killed for outing themselves, so as she speaks from a Gotham stage, Chin is giving voice to an entire population made silent by fear. The very existence of her whip-smart poems is an act of political defiance.

As a performer, Chin seems capable of fostering a revolution. Her growling voice rolls with impeccable rhythm, making hypnotic music out of witty insights and sharp social critiques.

In the show's first half, her story is well-shaped, expertly wending from homeland fear and oppression to the freedom she finds via New York microphones. Whether stuttering over painful memories or spilling out praise for an ex-girlfriend, her commitment to each story gives its emotion a very real sting.

This immediacy hits a thrilling apex at the show's midpoint, when Chin finally explodes into rage. She's made it to America, able to speak freely, so she belts out a poem about the hatred she's endured. Her voice low and loud, her hair unleashed from pigtails into a billowing Afro, she launches her words to the furious stomps of her feet. Even the lights get angry, as a fiery orange blast erupts from beneath the plastic-glass floor. Lit from below, Chin's a shadowy specter devouring the stage. For a moment she's as superhuman as a Fury.

Then, thankfully, she has the sense to tell a joke. Humor leavens the self-righteousness and lets the political warrior become goofily human. It's hard to feel proselytized by a woman who once cried so hard while getting her hair combed that she ended up with "tears, snot and hair oil smoothed on (her) face in an unpleasant potion." And by placing a harrowing tale of sexual assault next to a giddy discovery of "dyke rock," Chin complicates her anger with vulnerability and joy.

Director Rob Urbinati and lighting designer Garin Marschall adeptly make images match the performer's tone. When she remembers being a shy young thing, Chin turns in small circles, sometimes chasing a spotlight that moves without her. There's no doubting, then, the woman she's become when she later bounds through light that shifts with her mood…
 
Sets and lighting, Garin Marschall; sound, Emily Wright; creative consultant, Carolyn Allen. Opened June 16, 2005. Reviewed June 21. Running time: 1 HOUR, 25 MIN.  

Mark Blankenship , Variety

Staceyann Chin is Woman -- hear her roar! She has every reason to shout out loud and proudly. In her early 30s, Chin has already accomplished quite a lot, from being part of the Tony Award-winning ensemble of Def Poetry Jam to her complete self-acceptance as a lesbian. If that doesn't sound quite so remarkable, consider that she was raised in Jamaica, where homosexuality is illegal; and consider also that this half-black, half-Chinese performer was abandoned by both parents upon her birth and brought up by a series of relatives who, for the mot part, didn't know how to handle the young spitfire with a copious head of hair.

Eventually, Chin grew into a woman who crosses borders yet never fits comfortably within any single group. Her journey is the subject of Border/Clash: A Litany of Desire, her exuberant solo show at The Culture Project at 45 Bleecker. The piece fits neatly into the mold of the theater's previous occupants -- solo performances by such artists as Sarah Jones and Geraldine Hughes (though Chin lacks their gift for mimicry) and agitprop dramas like The Exonerated and Guantanamo. Yet there's a freshness to this presentation that breathes new life into the house. (Some credit belongs to director Rob Urbinati, who has, among other things, wisely kept the proceedings down to just under 90 minutes.) Chin has even reconfigured the space a bit, enlarging the stage -- it's now a plexiglass-covered platform through which brightly colored fabric shines -- and thrusting it into the audience. She has no qualms about being "in your face" both figuratively and literally: she sometimes steps into the audience and, at other points during the show, strips to her skivvies to change costumes.

Remarkably fleet of foot and with a commanding voice that can move from a whisper to a bellow in seconds, Chin has charisma to spare. Armed with the perfect phrase to describe any situation, from the onset of puberty to the writing of a letter to a spurned suitor, she seduces us into believing that we're her close confidants as she talks of her past, present, and future. Only after the show ends do we realize that she's been selective in her confessions and, perhaps, a bit eager to please. Does Chin think that the audience couldn't handle the full force of her anger towards her parents? Or has her belief in Buddhism -- adopted partly because a Catholic priest tried to seduce her -- truly softened her bitterness towards a father who didn't even wait around to witness her birth and a mother so self-absorbed that she left her two children behind, visiting them just once before shunting them off to another set of relatives?

Chin even finds some humor in the most devastating moments of her life. As a college student at the prestigious University of the West Indies, she forged an identity as an totally out lesbian. While this declaration had its romantic advantages, including a near-relationship with the succinctly described Savannah Lane Parker, it also resulted in a near gang-rape in a bathroom by a group of Jamaican boys who were determined to cure her of her "illness."

When the show shifts to cover Chin's experiences in New York (she came here shortly after college), her mode of communication changes as well, from simple narration to the kind of slam poetry for which she first became famous. Her recreation of her debut at the NuYorican Poet's Café is particularly riveting. While not everyone will find this part of the show easily accessible, the richness of the language rewards close listening. All of us -- black or white, straight or gay, thick-haired or bald -- have a lot to learn from Staceyann Chin.

Brian Scott Lipton, Theatremania.com
June 17, 2005

Few stage personalities come as proudly miscegenated as Staceyann Chin: half black, half Chinese; Jamaican born but a longtime Brooklyn resident; a femme lesbian who admits to harboring butch fantasies. In many ways, Chin's new
one-woman show is just as unclassifiable as its creator. A coming-of-age autobiography that morphs midway into a poetry slam performance, Border/Clash begins with Chin's modest childhood in a Jamaican backwater. Abandoned by her parents, Chin grew up under her ultra-Christian grandmother's tutelage, eventually moving to New York, where she found her
groove as a slam poet on the Lower East Side and later as a performer in Russell Simmons's Def Poetry Jam. Harrowing though Chin's story is meant to be, the real attraction is her verbal dexterity. This gifted vocal artist excels equally at prose and verse, and her unforced charm invigorates the play's patchwork structure. Immensely likable, Chin remains something of a bohemian cliché. The more she emphasizes her multifaceted individuality, the less individual she becomes. Of course, no one is more aware of this than Chin, who diffuses her self-seriousness with ample self-mockery. Her "angry woman poetry" is often "laced with humor to make it go down easier," she explains teasingly. Beating her own critics to the punch, Chin gets the last laugh, and then spins it into rhythmic gold.

David Ng, Village Voice

Slam Artist Makes the Leap

Anyone who saw Staceyann Chin perform on Broadway in "Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam" knew that she was headed for big things. On a stage with nine charismatic artists, Ms. Chin stood out as a ferocious and slyly funny poet with a skill for turning a clever phrase. With her appealing autobiographical show "Border/Clash: A Litany of Desires," she has the stage
to herself, and commands your attention.

With razor-sharp cheekbones and two voluminous puffs of hair resting on top of a delicate wisp of a body, Ms. Chin is a caricaturist's dream. Like Sarah Jones, another poetry slam artist who made the transition to straight theater - her "Bridge and Tunnel" was also produced at 45 Bleecker - Ms. Chin has the paper-thin figure of a movie star. (Don't they feed the
performers at the Nuyorican Poetry Café?)

"I am a lanky thing with more than a little swank in my swing," she says about her herself when growing up in Jamaica. With clear-eyed and unpretentious prose, Ms. Chin is especially affecting while describing her relationships with her Chinese father and Jamaican mother, both of whom abandoned her. But Ms. Chin is not one to wallow in her troubles. She confronts them and moves on. After coming out of the closet as a teenager, she was assaulted by several boys, which, as she tells it, was the impetus for her move to the United States, far away from the homophobia of her homeland. "Jamaica," she says, "is the kind of place that foreigners fall in love with."

Once she moves to New York, the play shifts into a more conventional poetry slam voice. Ms. Chin settles into her familiar stage persona - confident, fierce and street smart. With a voice that often rises into a shout, she describes meeting Danny Glover at the Tony Awards and explains how Eminem is a guilty pleasure. Ms. Chin also makes much of a trip to the studios of CNN, which she puzzlingly describes as the "Antichrist of the modern media industry."

The first half of the show is filled with honest and introspective reflections, but the second half seems less dramatic and, at times, a bit forced. Of course, that doesn't mean there isn't a wealth of clever lines, nicely crafted love poems as well as the following highly practical relationship advice: "Though I believe two wrongs don't ever make a right/sometimes slashing his tires makes you feel better."

By Jason Zinoman, New York Times
Published: June 21, 2005

By Staceyann Chin. Dir. Rob Urbinati. With Chin. Culture Project Staceyann Chin a performer and activist who came to prominence as the most powerful cast member of Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam on Broadway is a half-Jamaican, half-Chinese lesbian. But while the combination may sound exotic, Chin insists that she¹s just another color in a radical rainbow
world. In her autobiographical one-woman show, Border/Clash, Chin chronicles the defining moments of her life: her abandonment by her parents; her strict Catholic upbringing in the West Indies; and her triumphant move to New York
City, where she found success (and herself) as a slam poet.    Like many solo shows, Border/Clash suffers from self-indulgence at times. In trying to condense her 30 years into a coherent 90-minute piece, Chin uses historical shorthand, but her riffs on September 11, the Tony Awards and CNN sound pretty stale. However, when this gifted artist sticks
to the unique details of her incredible life‹particularly her island upbringing‹she¹s a knockout. We wince as her grandmother combs the knots out of her unruly hair, cheer when she becomes a feminist in college and cringe when a dozen male classmates molest her in a men¹s bathroom. Chin¹s extraordinary storytelling skills infuse each anecdote with an uncanny
vibrancy that makes us feel as if we were right there with her through it all. Raven Snook  

Time Out New York

Staceyann Chin is a fantastic, charismatic performer and Border/Clash: A Litany of Desires, her new show at 45 Bleecker, is a triumph.

Like most of the New York theater community, I became aware of Staceyann after seeing her in Russell Simmons¹ Def Poetry Jam on Broadway in 2002. The show had nine poets, who I enjoyed in varying degrees, but she was an
obvious standout.

Border/Clash is a spoken-word piece that tells the story of Staceyann's life. She was born in Jamaica and moved to New York shortly after college. It¹s a pretty thrilling rags to riches story-- she's lived the American Dream.

While it mostly follows the narrative, Staceyann occasionally veers off into poems that I¹d call her greatest hits. It¹s here that the audience really reacts and most of these moments end in well-deserved applause.

Border/Clash is nicely staged by Rob Urbinati and the design by Garin Marschall is top-notch. Don't miss your chance to see one of our great cotemporary poets in action.

Border/Clash is currently playing at the 45 Bleecker Theater. Tickets are available via Ticketmaster.com  

StageSpace.com Blog Poetry
Posted by Ryan at June 18, 2005

A Jamaican survivor takes flight

NEW YORK -- An intense and talented writer-performer who sizzled so fiercely through "Def Poetry Jam" on Broadway in 2003, Staceyann Chin now offers her autobiographical "Border/Clash: A Litany of Desires."

Opening last Thursday at the Culture Project, Chin projects a magnetic presence and her new solo show smolders with fiery passages and pungent poetry.

It's the 90-minute saga of an imaginative girl who grows up in rural Jamaica. Forsaken by her Chinese father and neglected by her Jamaican mom, Chin conceives of herself as "a tiny bird breaking the speed limit of tradition."

After the angst of adolescence, Chin quickly discovers her attraction to women. But "living out loud as a lesbian" leads to trouble in dangerously homophobic Jamaica, where she barely escapes rape by a dozen guys in a university toilet.

This tension-mounting sequence is strikingly rendered by Chin's writing and taut performance as she slowly inches her way out of danger.

Then it's onward to America and Chin's embrace of Brooklyn life and her evolution as an artist. Chin's first time at an open mike session at the Nuyorican Poet's Café reveals unexpected powers as a lyrical ranter.

The fledgling poems "Brown Sugar" and "Some of the things I believe" are rendered as sexually frank, socially aware samples of the verbal music that Chin makes to increasing successfulness. As Chin channels her maturing gifts, a hardening of voice and coiling of energy make her physically appear to be growing up right before the audience's eyes.

Other poetic pieces follow as Chin deals with personal and global issues. These eloquent flights of erotic fancy and political rage are litanies of different kinds of desire, expressed by Chin with acute physicality.

She finally learns to celebrate her inner conflicts regarding identity. "I want to go down in history/in a chapter marked miscellaneous/because the writers could find no other way to categorize me," Chin declares near the show's conclusion. "In this world where classification is key/I want to erase the straight lines/so I can be me."

Although Chin's obsession with abandonment issues grows tiresome -- she admits it herself -- much of the content is heartfelt and even inspirational in nature. There is a certain hear-me-roar feminist tone to parts of the show that sounds outmoded in these freer times, but perhaps that is simply Chin's inescapable personal essence.

Director Rob Urbinati has surrounded Chin with a supportive mix of color, light and sound. Hot red and orange lighting shades the artist's intermittent blazes of passion as she prowls around designer Garin Marschall's abstract set. A slim, wiry figure whose masses of bristling hair suggest the electricity of her spirits, Chin is an original whose songs of
herself are well worth experiencing.  

Michael Sommers, New Jersey Star Ledger
Monday, June 20, 2005

Maturation can be a hair-raising experience

During the first half of her biographical one-woman show, "Border/Clash," Staceyann Chin undergoes a remarkable transformation. The poet and spoken-word performer, who won a Tony in 2003 as part of the Broadway cast of "Def Poetry Jam," morphs from wide-eyed girl to coltish teenager to sinewy woman, a chain of transformations heightened by the restyling of her wild explosion of hair.

When it details her fragmented family life in Jamaica and the shifts in her sexual development, the production, which opened Thursday, is both tough and tender. Eventually, though, Chin moves to New York and becomes a success, at which point her stories - I won a Tony! I was on CNN! - quickly become less interesting.

Her reactions to 9/11 are similarly uninvolving. We will, however, remember Chin's vivid evocation of her grandmother, a deaf old woman who dispenses cryptic aphorisms, and the only one to have any luck in taming the hair that's as stubbornly independent as Chin herself.

BORDER/CLASH. Written by Staceyann Chin, directed by Rob Urbinati. The Culture Project, 45 Bleecker St. at Lafayette, Manhattan. Tickets $25 and $45. Call 212-307- 4100 or visit www.ticketmas ter.com. Seen June 13.

GordonCox, Newsday
June 20, 2005

Witty, strong, clever, defiant and funny, Stacey Ann Chin brings to the stage something to remember in Border/Clash, her latest one-woman show.

Using her own life as a backdrop, Stacy Ann pulls you in and holds your attention with songs and stories of her native Jamaica. As she opens up the closet to reveal her sexuality, her frustrations, her anger and her reality, you are captured by the little things that allow you to see the lighter things in life. This Lesbian Jamaican-Asian woman brings you in to her world with the grace of a gazelle and the roar of a lion.

As you travel with Stacy Ann on her journey, you begin to experience the true essence of what it is like to be HER. While watching her performance I found that at times when there should have been laughter, there was a delay. Perhaps those who were watching made a pit stop in their own minds for a moment.

At the end, her closing statements are generic but also profound. The method in which she delivers the summary is like a silent violin in the mist of a new melody. As a poet and an actress she displays her craft in the way that only she can deliver, a style that sets her apart from the rest of the pack, a style that is undeniably, Stacy Ann Chin.

Border/Clash is definitely worth the time and if missed, a great loss. Do yourself a favor and check out this Tony Award winning performer in what is sure to be pegged as one of her greatest artistic works to date. You¹ll be glad you did!
For More Infor.: www.staceyannchin.com

AnotherDeepDesign.com

In a NYC theater climate where current and recent productions have included several one woman shows, the skeptical may wonder just what Ms. Staceyann Chin has to add to the pot, and whether her show merits attendance regardless of what has come before. Well, BORDER/CLASH: A Litany of Desires is certainly Staceyann Chin¹s particular life story. However, her still evolving tale of a half-Chinese, half-black Jamaican born lesbian who left her homeland in search of acceptance and safety in a town called New York City is compelling not only for its relative singularity, but because it is just so well conveyed.

Staceyann Chin is the kind of person who has taken the trials in her life and channeled them into poignant performance art. Recounting the pains of her youth with the same humor she affords subjects like letters written to ex-lovers, and what it was like to receive a Tony Award at Radio City Music Hall, Chin draws the crowd in with skill and wit. Yet BORDER/CLASH is by no means fluff. Chin relates very personal details of her life. Her ³Chinaman² father denied she was his, and he may or may not have raped her mother, who was said to have been with him for monetary advantage. Both Chin and her brother were abandoned by their mother. As a late teen/early adult, Ms. Chin slept with men, but her realization that she is gay, a crime in Jamaica, led to a college campus assault that was very nearly a gang rape intended to cure her of her ³illness.² On that subject alone, I could write pagesŠ

Somehow, Chin relates her experiences without making her audience uncomfortable. Edgy? Yes. Tense? Yes. But I was with her every word of the way, often quite amused by her sophisticated retorts and observations. Aided in her efforts, Chin¹s BORDER/CLASH employs appropriate lighting, a colorful set, and the kind of direction that can rein in a performer, like Staceyann Chin, who could probably talk all night without taking much of a break at all.

I found BORDER/CLASH: A Litany of Desires to be rather impressive indeed. Staceyann Chin has a voice that not only needs to be, but must be heard in a world where people are still being killed for the color of their skin, their choice of deity, or for who they happen to love. Ms. Chin is invigorating, and she never pretends to be anything other than a work that is still in progress.

Kessa DeSantis, Electronic Link

I've been hearing good things about performance poet Stacyann Chin for the better part of a decade now. Chin initially burst on the scene in the late '90s at the legendary Nuyorican Poets Cafe and rapidly rose to acclaim as part of Russell Simmons' unlikely Broadway hit Def Poetry Jam. Now she is back off-Broadway with Border/Clash, a new solo show at The Culture Project. "Once upon a time..." begins Chin as she narrates her life story in Border/Clash. Born in Jamaica with a black mother and a Chinese father, she was virtually abandoned by her parents and left to be raised first by a detached Christian aunt and later by a deaf grandmother. Even at an early age she began making up stories and vying for attention. Plagued with abandonment issues the awkwardly tall girl began to question everything: religion, authority, CNN, freedom, politics, her country and her own sexuality.The centerpiece of Border/Clash comes as rumors of Chin's lesbian proclivities make the rounds in her small Jamaican town. A group of homophobic boys corner her and drag her into the bathroom to show her how good sex with a man can be. Just as things get heated, a closeted boy that she met at a gay club stumbles into the restroom. But will he help her and risk giving away his own hidden sexual identity? I won't spoil the ending, but the whole horrific scene is poignant and riveting. Though it is early in the new theater season, I dare to say that this will one of the best moments onstage this year. Being a triple minority (black, Asian and gay), Chin naturally has a lot of anger and hostility to work through. And she does offer a few well-timed rants. But what is most surprising about Border/Clash is the humor that Chin injects into every moment of the show. Chin has every reason to be angry, preachy and didactic; instead she is funny, touching and endlessly charming. If there were an award for Most Charismatic Solo Performer, Chin would win by a landslide. Chin is less successful in making Border/Clash into a cohesive play. For starters, the choice to present her story chronologically is a bit uninspired. Despite director Rob Urbinati's efforts, it ends up feeling very choppy as we jump suddenly from age 10 to age 15 to age 18 all on Garin Marschall's cheery Lifesaver-colored set. The production also leaps stylistically from moments of straightforward storytelling, to theatrical monologue to slam poetry. Each of these parts is handled expertly, but the overall piece winds up with a frenetic, staccato quality. Those who would lump performance poetry into a category with mime, puppetry or oral surgery have little to fear with Chin. Border/Clash is more akin to a John Leguizamo stand-up act than a Karen Finley tome. Ultimately, this a wonderfully ambitious evening of performance about the freedoms we take for granted, pursuing the American Dream, dealing with personal demons and the healing power of performance. While it sadly won't change the world, it will certainly inspire and provoke.

Ron Lasko, Broadway.com

Taking it on the Chin
A new one-woman show starring Staceyann Chin

Staceyann Chin first proved herself onstage in 2002’s ”Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam on Broadway,” where she became a breakout among a cast of mediagenic rhymesters. She was also co-writer of that show. She has now hit the big time on her own with a show off-Broadway. Chin has taken an autobiographical page from “Def Jam.” Here, she expands on her travails growing up as the child of a Jamaican mother and a Chinese father. She might have been a hybrid, but she’s all lesbian. In “Border/Clash: A Litany of Desires,” she has put together a saga of her evolution as an artist from birth to her arrival as a recognized poet. Chin narrates her childhood in Jamaica up through the realization of her lesbian identity and the emergence of her political voice. She was raised by her mother and grandmother. She never knew her father. “Homosexuality in Jamaica is not just a social taboo,” she says. “It’s an abomination that inspires celebrated songs with violently killing of ‘chi-chi men’ and lesbians. I have known men who were beaten to death because they were suspected of having female tendencies. These crimes often remain ‘unsolved.’ Women who dare to cross over into the realm of lesbian life do so with the ever-present threat of rape.” Chin is tall and willowy, with massive chunks of hair that she fools with during the performance. She uses her hands to make points as a supplement to her prosody. As Jerry Garcia might have said, what a long strange trip it’s been. Too bad her show, like her far-more-interesting life, is still a work in progress. The stories she tells are fascinating in and of themselves, but they don’t add up to a satisfying evening in the theater. They are simply too disconnected. Chin moved from Jamaica to Brooklyn and immediately fell in love with its energy and liberating liberal attitude. “Brooklyn called to me, “she says. “From Flatbush to Fulton, from Utica to Underhill, I sensed an electricity of living that deified categorization. It tickled me that no one objected to the violent preaching on the J. No body cared if I kissed the girls or not.” But “Border/Clash” implies that there’s a disconnect between her two geographical poles, which isn’t so. She admits that much of Brooklyn — the streets, the smells, the meat patties — reminds her of her home. But it’s not enough to make us nostalgic — or to identify with her nostalgia. “Border/Clash” puts slam poetry, autobiography and political commentary into a linguistic blender (not too well). The show finally shits into high gear when Chin discovers that she has a gift for expressing herself through poetry. Soon enough, she found herself slamming at the Nuyorican Poets Café on the Lower East Side. As part of a group, she undoubtedly shines. But her material is not strong enough for a one-woman show. This is a one-woman show that could have used a few guest stars or impersonations. The material gets a little solipsistic. It would have been nice to meet some of her lesbian lovers or even the parents she never really knew. The poetry isn’t strong enough to take us there on its own. “I want to go down in history marked Miscellaneous,” is a typical malapropism. But the real problem is that Chin simply hasn’t lived enough to warrant a one-woman show. By the time someone mounts the kind of production that requires and audience to give you their full attention for 90-plus minutes, there should be a lot more behind that person than a childhood, a move to Brooklyn and a career path that includes one guest appearance on a CNN program. Rob Urbinati directed the show with an overall nimbleness — lots of bouncing on cushions and bed linens, which may be a tad too bourgeois for the bohemian precincts of Brooklyn that Chin extols. Garin Marschall provides the set and designing light. It looks comfy.

Gerard Robinson, New York Blade Theater
Jun. 24, 2005

Passion, Glorious Language Combine with Electric Performance in Border/Clash

"My mother has chosen Staceyann: derived from the Russian Anastasia
Anti-stasis I like to think my mother wanted this child to move"

In Border/Clash: a litany of desires performer/poet Staceyann Chin lives up to what she believes her mother’s desire was. Chin rarely stops moving, physically or linguistically, in this "one-character play in poetic vignettes" that is by turns deeply humorous, richly invigorating and often simply thrilling.

During the course of Chin’s 90-minute piece, directed with tenderness, care and intensity by Rob Urbinati, she moves the audience through her life – from birth to present day (spanning roughly thirty years), from her roots in Jamaica to her newfound ones in Brooklyn and later, after her breakout performance in Def Poetry Jam, the globe.

Chin’s presence on stage – she’s a tall, lanky woman, with a smile that can radiate good will and eyes that can sparkle mischievously or burn with deep thought or anger – is as refreshing as her language that acts as a catapult for the biographical anecdotes that she relates in her heady, hypnotic Jamaican accent.

Some of these can be simply (and I imagine that this is a word that she would loathe) heartbreaking, as she tells of how, just after her birth, her mother left her and her brother in the care of an aunt and their grandmother. When their mother does return, the aunt announces that she will no longer care for her niece and nephew, and the mother sends them to live with different members of the family. Reflecting on the loss she felt and the distance that develops as he grows up on the other side of the island,

"I insert both of us into fairy tales
Hansel and Gretel finding our way back to a common father
worlds apart at nine/he was only eleven
when I watched his sturdy courage walk
the long road that divided our future."

Teen years with a grandaunt give way to college years, where she realizes that she is a lesbian, and Chin embraces her sexuality with voracious exuberance. Her being "out" is not without consequences, though, and this leads to one of the most chilling moments in "Border." Subsequent to this, Chin moves to Brooklyn (a relocation realized beautifully in Garin Marschall’s set – brightly colored fabrics that have been hanging on what might be an arced clothesline fall to reveal swathes of darker rectangular fabrics that dramatically bring to mind the architecture of the city).

Chin’s narrative and poetry can be sly in its humor and its drama. Here a particular favorite is a moment late in the play where she reads a poem to a "Dear Secret ex-lover." The writing is filled with hurt, pain, and anger, at one point saying:

"the era of water retention is over
without the rock of you blocking my frail kidneys
I piss more frequently."

After delivering this letter, though, Chin, quietly and self-mockingly, undercuts the moment with a simple turn of phrase that inspires a gale of laughter.

As Chin moves through her adulthood, one also comes to understand how she came to be on the stage of 45 Bleecker, as she relates her first performances at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and performs, first, some of her work from that period and then her later work, that has been embraced by "mainstream" or "uptown" audiences. This work, and the narrative that surrounds it, pulsates with her sexuality and political views that electrifies, crossing boundaries of race, gender, and sexual orientation.

Concurrently, Chin begins to reflect on the events of her childhood, finding, not so much graciously, but rather with a level of maturity and self-assurance, that she can understand, forgive, and use her mother’s actions in adulthood.

"I am now chewing bitter memories/ digesting tears into poems
growing each year more indebted to my aging mother
certain that she has given me more that she ever thought she could"

It’s a stunning sentiment, and as Chin moves toward her conclusion, listing a litany of desires that she holds for her future, one cannot help but hope she achieves all of them, even as one regrets the fact that "Border/Clash" is drawing to a close.

Andy Propst, American Theatre Web
6/17/2005

Liberating the One-Woman Show
Staceyann Chin, a Jamaican lesbian veteran of Def Jam Poetry, shines with truth

If the spirit of LGBT liberation is eluding you in this season of pride, rediscover it at The Culture Project, where poet and performance artist Staceyann Chin gathers up all the strains of her colorful life into a witty, moving, intelligent, sexy and bittersweet tale of love and revolution that she calls Border/Clash: A Litany of Desires.

Chin, a native of Jamaica with both Chinese and African ancestry, first displayed her considerable talent at the Nuyorican Poets Café in New York in 1998, a moment relived to great effect in this show. She took her slamming all over the world, eventually being invited to be a part of ³Def Poetry Jam² on HBO and on Broadway.

If you are done with one-person shows, Staceyann Chin in all her slender, big-haired glory should redeem the genre for you. When she starts out portraying her childhood in Jamaica, I was worried this might be an evening of cutesiness and earnestness. That fear was quickly extinguished. Chin doesn¹t just tell her story and those of her family and lovers and antagonists, she seamlessly weaves in incisive commentary while maintaining her dramatic narrative.

Especially riveting is her recreation of a frightening incident where she was confronted by a gang of men for being the only out lesbian at her university. She conveys her own terror and the cruelty and stupidity of her attackers without descending into pathos, all the while helping us understand the significance of what is going on.

Chin tells us her motto is Audre Lorde¹s warning, ³Your silence will not protect you.² There is barely a pause in this 90-minute whirlwind tour of her life and no one ­­including herself ­­escapes her trenchant analysis.

Chin harbors affection for her island nation, but she will never be asked to be a spokesperson for the Jamaican Tourist Board. And while New York may offer her the opportunity to express her sexuality and politics more openly, the increasingly reactionary politics of America today drive her just as crazy.

Staceyann Chin is restless on stage and in life and love. She reminds us that we can never totally be at home in this broken world, but we can still feast on its many delights ­­not least this shared experience in the theater. It is a liberating truth, performed by an admirable activist and artist who is also a terrific entertainer.

Chin is the writer and performer of "Border/Clash," but she is not alone on stage. She is briskly directed by Rob Urbinati, inhabiting an environment designed and lit by Garin Marschall that lets her shine.

Andy Humm, Gay City News

'Border' Line Arousal

SOMETIMES it doesn't pay for performers to get too successful. Staceyann Chin (right) is a case in point: Her work was so much more powerful before she became a star.

In the first half of her solo show "Border/Clash: A Litany of Desires," the poet-performance artist provides a portrait of growing up in Jamaica, as the daughter of a black woman and a Chinese man, both whom abandoned her.

Vividly describing her adolescent discovery of her lesbianism in a country where homosexuality is illegal and gay people are victimized, Chin delivers a compelling sketch of her search for her identity — sexual and otherwise.

But then she moves to New York, delivers her personal and politically tinged poetry at the Nuyorican Poets Café and becomes a standout in Broadway's "Def Poetry Jam."

Such urgent stories as her account of being nearly gang-raped in a bathroom while at college become replaced by less-than-thrilling tales of being interviewed by CNN and meeting Danny Glover at the Tony Awards. Despite its lapse into career self-absorption, Chin's monologue is an involving solo performance, thanks largely to her charisma and fierce intelligence.

Nor does her beauty hurt, either: Frequently stripping down to her underwear to change outfits onstage, she exudes a sensuality that gives her frank accounts of her sexual adventures more than a little credibility.

Still, it's the early part of the evening when she delivers heartfelt anecdotes about living with her grandmother; her confusion when receiving her first Barbie doll and her growing awareness of the physical changes in her pubescent body that give the show its most moving and unaffected moments.

Frank Scheck, New York Post
June 27, 2005

Border/Clash: A Litany of Desires

Staceyann Chin, of Def Poetry Jam, delivers an arresting autobiography in verse, which travels from her Jamaican girlhood to her coming of age as a lesbian to her career in the United States as a writer and spoken-word artist. Though her story is charged with identity politics, she keeps her aggressive streak at a simmer, not a boil. Even at her most earnest, she has a breezy, disarming air, and she also has a gift that eludes many slam poets: the ability to laugh at herself. Directed by Rob Urbinati. (The Culture Project, 45 Bleecker St. 212-307-4100.)

Issue of 2005-07-04
Posted 2005-06-27

Border/Clash Written and Performed by Staceyann Chin
An evolving life from Jamaica to New York

Staceyann Chin, original cast member from Tony winning Def Poetry Jam, has her own one woman show, Border/Clash: A Litany of Desires at The Culture Project, 45 Bleecker St. in Manhattan which opened on June 16, 2005.

The show is performance. Poetry. A little song. It’s the autobiographical telling of Staceyann Chin’s life story in prose. It starts with her as a young girl in Jamaica.

The juxtaposing of her language showcases her talent. Her lithe form, constantly in motion, adds physicality to the 85-minute non-stop performance, a portrait of a woman evolving.

Staceyann Chin’s Chinese father denied her paternity and when she’s very young her Jamaican mother leaves for Canada. She’s left to a Grandma and Auntie, tough love within the confines of a strict Christian household. These beginnings are a constant thread of issues for her--abandonment and outsiderness.

She struggles through adolescence and forges a new sexual identity--she likes girls. She is public about her preferences. The pace is quick.

The breezy manner of the performance doesn’t prepare us for what is to follow, a tension filled sequence, vividly real. Invoking impending horrors, a mob of local homophobic men physically isolate her--feeling she’s a religious abomination and it is their duty to set her “straight,” to cure her. They become more and more physical. She barely escapes. The specter of this life traumatizing violence propels her to New York.

New York opens the door to freedoms she never had in the rigid structure paradise of home. She loves Jamaica yet remembers its repressiveness is coated with violence. In New York, along with her sexual freedom a political voice takes root.

This performance reveals how her persona emerges in New York. Her voice seeks a public audience in slam activism--her beginnings are at the Nuyorican Café in the E. Village. Her words are lyrical and fierce.

The audience is captivated in The Culture Project’s intimate U-shaped theatre that provides a wonderful venue for connecting performer and audience. Frequently members of the audience audibly respond as the poetry glides and her story unfolds. Some women in the audience were happy to hear a voice rarely heard, a sexual niche rarely revealed. Others understood the piece to be both expressing specifics of being black and lesbian and the universals of outsiderness and the risks of taking political stands.

Staceyann Chin has won many American Poetry slams, regularly speaks or performs at colleges, is included in numerous anthologies and CD compilations and is also co-writer to Def Poetry Jam on Broadway and participated in its 51 city international tour last year. This is the third one-woman show she’s performed at The Culture Project.

Having arrived in New York in 1997, Jamaica is far and sometimes not that far. When she misses eating ackee and saltfish she takes a train to Fulton St., goes to Golden Crust. She listens to second-generation Jamaicans playing Bob Marley on Nostrand Avenue. Crown Heights is where she feels and calls home.

The Culture Project is a non-profit arts organization that focuses on the creation of theater relevant to our times. With an emphasis that illuminates social issues, artists aiming to enlighten and provoke are given special encouragement. The confluence of politics and culture of our time finds a venue here.

Performances are Tuesday through Saturday at 8pm with matinees on Saturday at 3pm and Sunday at 4pm. Student rush tickets are $20, available one hour before show time, limit one with a valid student ID. Tickets: Ticketmaster, 212-307-4100 or ticketmaster.com or at The Culture Project Box Office, 45 Bleecker St. at Lafayette.

Tequila Minsky, Heritagekonpa Magazine

Border/Clash: A Litany of Desires

Presented by Ira Pittelman and Allan Buchman at the Culture Project, 45 Bleecker St., NYC. Opened June 16 for an open run.

As we learned when we saw her in Broadway¹s Def Poetry Jam three seasons ago, StaceyannChin is expert at a saucy political rant, but in this autobiographical solo turn she makes an almost perfect transition from spoken-word artist to actor. She seems to know that the current bar for one-person shows is high, so she carefully balances those passages devoted to the narrative of her unlikely early life with those that throw verbal brickbats and pyrotechnics at the political and social innocuousness of our age. Divided into clinically labeled sections and subsections (Some of the Things I Believe, Revolution and Tumult), Chin first recounts her ancestry: unknown Chinese father, narcissistic Jamaican mother, then adolescent awakenings in her mother¹s homeland. Acutely sensitive to feelings of parental abandonment, of being female in a male-dominated culture, and finally of being gay, her self examination is crisp and clear. Her brilliantly written and performed description of her attempted rape in college is cauterizing and, for many, I suspect, the most selfless part of the piece. Her momentum flags midway through. One reason is that when her life takes a positive turn moving to New York, discovering her slam skills at the Nuyorican Poets Café, making a living on the spoken-word circuit, opening on Broadway, the dramatic tension is resolved. Or is it? Chin, in the piece¹s final section, deftly assisted by director Rob Urbinati, comes into her cocksure, feminist own: making peace with her childhood and demolishing, verbally and emotionally, those homophobic college-age boys who tried raping her into heterosexuality. Moving from monologue to the darkly funny freestyle poetry with which she so memorably lit up Jam, now she takes aim at all the injustices she sees in her new American life, from castigating politicians for using “terror to buy votes” to excoriating the media. “Be careful what you dream of,” she warns. “You just might awaken to find it true.”

Leonard Jacobs, Back Stage
June 30, 2005.

Border/Clash: A Litany of Desires

She was a hit during the Broadway run of the Def Poetry Jam and now Staceyann Chin has returned in a one-woman show "Border/Clash." Cleanly directed by Rob Urbinati, this compelling one woman show fills up the downstairs theater at Culture Project with crisp ideas.

Born of Chinese and Jamaican parents, Ms. Chin has a lithe body and caramel skin crowned by Don King hair. Her voice pierces the air with immaculate articulation and sways with a Jamaican accent.

Abandoned by her mother, in search of her identity and empowered by words, Chin invigorates standard issue topics with her seamless storytelling abilities. Unlike many other disenfranchised artists she does not indulge in the "blame game" even expressing solidarity with her mother for wanting to be liberated from motherhood. In fact, it is refreshing to hear an artist
navigate autobiographical territory with fierce emotionalism framed by universal truths.

A natural, Chin bounced from Jamaica to Canada, and finally landed in Brooklyn, USA. Chin knows how to churn out stories of pain and confusion, lace them with wit and political commentary and a dollop of wisdom.

Moving about the space with the ease of a dancer, I will make one recommendation. Get a seat in the center of the theater; otherwise, she will disappear behind two large poles as she swings from one side of the set to
the other.

This is an artist to watch and not to miss.

Celia Ipiotis, Eye On The Arts, WNYE-TV
7/1- 7/4/05

NEW YORK (AP) - Staceyann Chin defies easy classification. In fact, she rebels against it, saying in her autobiographical one-woman show playing off-Broadway that it's become her mission to "erase the straight lines" in society that dictate people's places and, often times, their worth.

But while this message and her uniqueness _ Chin is a lesbian activist slam poet from Jamaica who was born to a black mother and Chinese father _ could be enough to drive the show, it's her luscious and wonderfully witty writing and total command of the stage that make her such a fascinating person to watch.

Chin's words come rapid-fire in her clipped Jamaican accent, melodious yet often filled with rage and indignation _ "writing my own history is a political act," she proclaims. She crouches low like a cat while illuminated from lights in the stage and spews invective at a society controlled by men and riven with racism and homophobia.

There are also quieter moments of "Border-Clash," playing at the Culture Project, such as the opening, when the diminutive, shorts-and-haltertop-clad actress recounts her upbringing in her aunt's strict, God-fearing home. She was never close to her father and her mother abandoned her as a child to live in Canada, leaving Chin to surround herself with books and her girlhood fantasies.

Later, as she grows into her body, she tells about her first sexual experiences, then, her first love _ a woman in her college class. Chin's awakening as a lesbian is all-encompassing _ she shaves her head and listens faithfully to Melissa Etheridge albums _ which leads to the most harrowing scene in the play _ a showdown in a bathroom with a group of men who want to
turn her straight.

That encounter causes Chin to forsake her home island for the streets of New York, where she has carved out a successful career as a poet, performer and lecturer, having appeared in the Tony Award-winning "Russell Simmons' Def Poetry Jam" on Broadway and won innumerable slam poetry contests around the country.

Without seeming narcissistic, Chin says she feels her life was always meant to make a difference, and watching the fervor with which she throws herself into the show and hearing the conviction in her words, it's impossible not to believe her. Her purpose is so resolute, in fact, she encourages the audience to help her confront homophobia by spreading the word about her show.

Yet, as confident as she is, her vulnerability is apparent at times, too, such as when she speaks of lying in bed next to her girlfriend, their limbs twisted together like a pretzel. She also readily laughs at her insecurities when she receives an invitation to appear on a national news program. Sitting nervously in the makeup chair, she suddenly feels like a girl again,
timid and uncertain of her exact place.

It's these dichotomies that give Chin an undeniable force. Simply put, she's a writer that demands to be heard.

Justin Bergman, Associated Press
07-10-2005 15:50

An evolving life from Jamaica to New York

Staceyann Chin, original cast member from Tony winning Def Poetry Jam, has her own one woman show, Border/Clash: A Litany of Desires at The Culture Project, 45 Bleecker St. in Manhattan which opened June 16, 2005.

The show is performance. Poetry. A little song. It¹s the autobiographical telling of Staceyann Chin¹s life story in prose. It starts with her as a young girl in Jamaica.

The juxtaposing of her language showcases her talent. Her lithe form, constantly in motion, adds physicality to the 85-minute non-stop performance, a portrait of a woman evolving.

Staceyann Chin¹s Chinese father denied her paternity and when she was very young her Jamaican mother left for Canada. She¹s then left to a Grandma and Auntie, tough love within the confines of a strict Christian household. These beginnings are a constant thread of issues for her‹abandonment and outsiderness.

She struggles through adolescence and forges a new sexual identity‹she likes girls. She is public about her preferences. The pace is quick.

The breezy manner of the performance doesn¹t prepare us for what is to follow, a tension filled sequence, vividly real. Invoking impending horrors, a mob of local homophobic men physically isolate her‹feeling she¹s a religious abomination and it is their duty to set her ³straight,² to cure her. They become more and more physical. She barely escapes. The specter of this life traumatizing violence propels her to New York.

New York opens the door to freedoms she never had in the rigid structure paradise of home. She loves Jamaica yet remembers its repressiveness is coated with violence. In New York, along with her sexual freedom a political voice takes root.

This performance reveals how her persona emerges in New York. Her voice seeks a public audience in slam activism‹her beginnings are at the Nuyorican Café in the East Village. Her words are lyrical and fierce.

The audience is captivated in The Culture Project¹s intimate U-shaped theatre that provides a wonderful venue for connecting performer and audience. Frequently members of the audience audibly respond as the poetry glides and her story unfolds. Some women in the audience were happy to hear a voice rarely heard, a sexual niche rarely revealed. Others understood the piece to be both expressing specifics of being black and lesbian and the universals of outsiderness and the risks of taking political stands.

Staceyann Chin has won many American Poetry slams, regularly speaks or performs at colleges, is included in numerous anthologies and CD compilations and is also co-writer to Def Poetry Jam on Broadway and participated in its 51 city international tour last year. This is the third one-woman show she¹s performed at The Culture Project.

Having arrived in New York in 1997, Jamaica is far and sometimes not that far. When she misses eating ackee and saltfish she takes a train to Fulton St., goes to Golden Crust. She listens to second-generation Jamaicans playing Bob Marley on Nostrand Avenue. Crown Heights is where she feels and calls home.

The Culture Project is a non-profit arts organization that focuses on the creation of theater relevant to our times. With an emphasis that illuminates social issues, artists aiming to enlighten and provoke are given special encouragement. The confluence of politics and culture of our time finds a venue here.

Tequila Minsky, Downtown Express
Volume 18 € Issue 7 | July 8-14, 2005

Border/Clash: a riveting, theatrical ride

Staceyann Chin¹s performance in Border/Clash: A Litany of Desires² is a theatrical event. She is nothing less than riveting as she delivers an energized, honest, revealing and outspoken performance of her one-woman show, which she also wrote.
Chin tells the audience of her premature birth in Jamaica - to a mother who quickly abandoned her to be raised by her grandmother and Aunt June, and to a rich Chinese father who always ignored her existence - and of the many issues she faced growing up. She was upset when her body began to mature and fill out; no one seemed to explain what was happening to her, or helped to make her feel comfortable with it. She had other issues to face as she got older: as a lesbian in Jamaica, a place where people would beat her if they knew, she had to meet with fellow lesbian women and gay men in secret.
Chin relates her life story with both humor and gravity and shows great intensity when reliving painful memories. While a college student, Chin decided she would no longer hide her sexual orientation. One day a group of 12 male students grabbed her and brought her into the men¹s room in order to, supposedly, rape her to save her from Hell and then rape her again ­ to save her from herself. They felt that they could change her lesbian ways and make her a ‘normal’ person. As different men molest her, she recalls them only by the color of the shirts they wore. As this is going on she hears the bathroom door open and a closeted gay man, Andrew, walks in. He is able to save her by telling her attackers that lesbians carry AIDS. As he speaks they focus on him and she manages to run out, through the parking lot and all the way home. At that point she decides it is time to leave Jamaica and come to the United States, to New York City.

Chin talks about coming to New York and of the outlets she found for her poetry, which candidly speaks of her lesbianism and the injustice that Blacks endure. She recalls her first time performing at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe; being asked to be part of Def Poetry Jam on Broadway; and having the show to win the Tony. Her focus was that she got to share her message and proclaim her love of women.

This artist and poet has a commanding presence on stage, while also showing a vulnerable side ­ a side that is still trying to forgive her mother and father for not being a part of her formative years. She has love and great fondness for her grandmother, who is now 94 years old.

Chin exemplifies the saying, ³When life gives you a lemon, make lemonade.² She looks at how her mother abandoned her and left her in broken pieces, and says it¹s one of the reasons she is a whole person now. She seems to be strengthened by the negative aspects of her childhood and uses her past as a means to realize she can be whatever she chooses to be. She is someone who has been considered radical and she likes it. She likes being a free spirit who can think, say and do what she feels is good for her.

Chin admits that her show is embarrassing to her family, except her grandmother, but is also proud to tell of the hardships she has endured in becoming this confident young woman who stands before the audience loudly declaring her preferences and beliefs about love, religion, and politics.

This show will burn itself in your mind. But be warned: there is a lot of profanity and sexual language involved in sharing this young woman¹s journey from birth until today. Chin¹s show never has a dull moment and is powerfully directed by Rob Urbinati. It has a homey set designed by Garin Marschall, who is also responsible for the dramatic lighting. Sound design is by Emily Wright and includes sounds that take the audience from Jamaican nights to New York City and the Nuyorican Poets Cafe on a poetry night.

’Border/Clash’ is a production of The Culture Project and playing at The Culture Project, which is located at 45 Bleecker Street. For tickets call 212-307-4100

Linda Armstrong, Amsterdam News
Special to the AmNews
Originally posted 6/22/2005