Asian Fortune Your source for all things Asian American
By Jewel Edwards
Q’s face morphs into a glare as she points her finger at the audience. Affecting a thick Indian accent, she scolds us. Her mother’s words, replete with her mother’s cadence, and her mothers stance, ring out into the theater. A second ago, she was a sassy teenage version of herself wearing gold hoops, and before that, a militant black friend from the past named Alicia — and now she’s a middle-aged Indian immigrant giving her daughter her best advice. Her transitions from character to character are seamless, and more than convincing.
Indian-born Qurrat Ann Kadwani was born and raised in the Bronx, New York, an experience she explores in depth as the character/narrator “Q”, in addition to twelve other personas in the play she wrote, titled “They Call Me Q.” Among them, a stern but loving interpretation of her mother, “Mummi,” her father, “Abba,” and various friends and family members, including a cousin in an arranged marriage, and a friend who commits suicide. Kadwani’s one-woman act was performed at the DC Capital Fringe Festival July 18, July 20, and July 21.
Kadwani’s play explores the hardships unique to her background as one of the only Indian Americans in her neighborhood. However, her struggles with the issues of race, self-love, bullying, and loss come across as both universal and familiar.
Armed with just a few props; a jean jacket, a black bolero, some inexpensive gold jewelry, and lighting that changes on cue, Kadwani displays depth and nuance in each of her characters. One of Kadwani’s achievements is her ability to seamlessly transition from moments of intense emotionality to lighthearted humor. Minutes after Q experiences the devastation of the suicide of her friend, Beenie, she is reminiscing about her mother’s cooking. Instead of feeling jarred, viewers shift moods and scenes with Q, a testament to Kadwani’s ability to manipulate the audience’s emotions through both her writing and skillful acting.
“They Call Me Q” is also peppered with nuggets that encapsulate the immigrant experience and the perils of teen angst. “Anger was easy and accessible. Love was not,” says a reflective Q in a moment of self-revelation. Later, speaking of her native country, India, Q characterizes it was a place to both love and hate, emotions she also felt about herself.
It becomes clear what parts of Kadwani’s her life have had the largest impact on her; the death of her friend, her mother’s pearls of wisdom, and her own feelings of ennui dominate the many threads of the plot she has woven. In fact, upon performance’s end, you feel, eerily, as if you know Kadwani . That kind of intimacy could disconcerting to a more self-conscious artist. But Kadwani isn’t fazed by how vulnerable she makes herself by putting her life story on stage. “It comes with the territory,” she says.
Instead, Kadwani hopes that viewers focus less on Q’s experiences, and instead use them to understand their own lives. When she began writing the play nearly five years ago, Kadwani says she focused not only on her own experiences, but the emotions she could mine from viewers, “My goal was to become a mirror, so that others can see themselves with clarity,” she says. At the end of the hour-long journey, one gets the sense that Kadwani has attained her goal.
All photos (c) 2013, Antonio Martinez Photography
