Come Eat With Me is a performance piece that explores the relationship between caste and food while sharing a meal together. Focusing on Dalit Cuisine, the piece begins with personal stories and oral histories around food in Vamsi’s household and community and is peppered with existing literature and academic writing around the multilayered, many-flavoured relationships between caste and food. The piece unpacks questions of oppression and solidarity, grief and joy, and the everyday victories of the human spirit in the face of structural injustices. Audiences are invited to eat together and share their own stories around caste and food. The content of the performance piece is expanded in time & space, and the stories that are shared range from mythology to undisputed present reality.
When: Saturday, Mar. 16, 5:30-7:30 p.m. Dinner will follow the performance.
Where: The Rumpus Room, 15 Brodhead St. Mazomanie
Cost: FREE! Sponsored by the UW-Madison Division of the Arts, with funds from the Reilly Baldwin Wisconsin Idea Endowment.
About the Artist: Sri Vamsi Matta (Vamsi, he/him), is a Bangalore-based theatre actor, writer, and director. His practice is influenced by his Dalit identity, experience, and social location. The histories of his family and community inform the questions, topics, and mediums that Vamsi engages with through his work. His most recent traveling solo show performance, Come Eat With Me has received a tremendous response in the national and regional media across India. His play, Star in the Sky, about the institutional murder of a Dalit Ph.D. scholar in 2016, often seen as a moment of reckoning for Indian academia’s inherent caste biases, won second place at the prestigious Tata Literature Live! Sultan Padamsee Award For Playwriting.
Date/Time
Date(s) - 03/16/2024
5:30 pm - 7:30 pm
Location
The Rumpus Room
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