JOY: Well, I have to thank you, Melissa, giving me the opportunity to do this. When I was in school, the professor said, ‘Why do you study this voice? What are you going to do? Why do you want music major?’ I said, ‘I don’t want to do anything. I just want to learn to sing.’ [The professor said], ‘That’s very hard to get a job.’ I said, ‘That’s fine. Why do I need a nine to five job? No, not for me.’ MELISSA: I’m genuinely grateful to Joy for her unwavering trust in expression with this project and throughout my life. I have absolutely inherited it in my own worldview and life path, thanks to her. Eric [Garcia] and I were also thinking about what the goal of 花和霧 flowers and fog is: why is it existing, what’s the goal for the audience? For Joy and I, I think it’s a playful expression or self-por- trait, a strange and fantastical expe- rience of parent and child, and an experience where there’s space to interact with and receive these dif- ferent dimensions of us—but also not omitting the complexity, rup- ture or challenges. For me, working with Joy often feels like looking into a strange/special mirror—seeing the parts of me that are similar, differ- ent, changing between us; and I truly hope that’s a gift we can offer to audiences who come to witness us. 花和霧 flowers and fog premieres May 17-26 at the Gateway Theater in San Francisco. Info and tickets at melissalewis.art KAT GOROSPE COLE creates subtlety and spec- tacle through film, performance and drag. They revel in queer frivolity and immersive theater with Detour, which they’ve co-directed with Eric Garcia for 15 years. katcole.works KIM IP choreographs, directs, produces, and dramaturgically supports the creation of dance works, drag performances, and video. She is ⅙ of ABG (Asian Babe Gang) and loves poetry as much as she loves to be entertained. krimmip.com
and Melissa because there’s a kin- ship I feel with all 3 of us Asian-Am, Queer artmakers in our 30s. Each of us has been compelled to pro- cess our relationship with our moth- ers through our art forms. Melissa’s film with her mother and Kim’s proj- ect interviewing elders (about sex-
where I want to warmly hold what had been severed, or be curious about reframing it with my mom. Also, to be very candid, the first idea for the film and collaboration began in early COVID moments... I really couldn’t fathom losing my mom. Her health situation pointed
I found myself really wanting to be friends with my mother and be a form of support or a place of nurturing for my mother, because that's what I do for a lot of my friendships.
iness and sensuality) both inspired me to tell my own personal story, and here we are now collaborat- ing with Melissa and Joy for their show. It makes me wonder, what is it that’s drawing you both, Melissa and Kim, to this desire at this point in your life? For me, it’s been a way to connect to my mother’s culture and homeland, which I feel separate from, and to understand that grief. KIM: I found myself really wanting to be friends with my mother and be a form of support or a place of nur- turing for my mother, because that’s what I do for a lot of my friendships. I began teaching a weekly elders dance class that centered around joy, creativity, and belonging—this was my baby step towards safely getting closer to reimagining the potential friendship future I will have with my mum. MELISSA: Perhaps we’re all in dif- ferent versions of departures from our families of origin and then try- ing to figure out if/how to return. I see the way relationships can be marked by severing (moving away, misunderstanding, inability to hold space for one another, emotional volatility, layers of trauma, teen- age angst, not knowing how to talk about mixedness, and so on). Some- how I’m finding myself at a place
to the likely possibility of serious complications; I wanted to know more; I didn’t want her to die. Sorry if that’s dramatic. But I was learning more than I’d ever heard about Joy’s struggle to have me at 42. Reckoning with how close I was to not existing, how frag- ile Joy’s health felt, how present my own questions about having a child were/are…These enormous life/death cycle questions about mortality! The closest thing I felt I could reach for was to make something. Transforming the fear into movement, visual images, and storytelling was comforting. It brewed the tea leaves into some- thing we could sip on, together. And I don’t think that journey has ended! KIM: [TO MELISSA:] It’s taken you 31 years. You know what I mean? It takes I think 31 years to then be like, mum, I want to, let’s try again. Yeah, let’s try it. Now that I have context and the ability to speak this and have other people or places to work through this, I am ready now to have this part of our relationship exist…You’re synthesizing your relationship through a show with many different experiences together, but you’re not telling us that the relationship is a fixed image. It changes a bunch of times.
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