This Room is an Island

This Room Is an Island is a performative timeline recreated from two womens’ memories of different generations. When the historical events repeat in the present day, a metaphoric reminiscence of the island turns into an image of interpretation of a diasporic migrant’s belonging. In this performance, one must reconsider their identity, and position in the world” Yin-Chi Lee.

After two years of disconnection and discontinuity, This Room is an Island brings a new and much needed and exciting chance for immersive experience and re-connections. By transforming traditional theatre into a mobile performative-exhibition, the audience becomes active-participants. They move around the space made interactive and inhabitable by projection technology, mixed with live performance of dance, theatre and soundscape design. In our time of contemporary globalisation, migration and restricted borders, This Room is an Island seeks to develop a political and interactive experience in which participants co-create an empathic encounter between Taiwan and Aotearoa. 

The performance can be done in three to four loops a day, each loop overlapping with the previous. Every loop can host up to 50-80 audience, which leads to a maximum of 320 audience after a day of performance. 

TRIAI creates a hybridised world between 1950’s Taiwan and 2022 Aotearoa through performance and technology. By providing innovative shows for our community and narrating a more focused angle of Asian story, TRIAI adds a new perspective of Asian diaspora and the depth of its embodied history. 

A pilot performance was done in 2021, which successfully explored the pilot concepts of audience interaction and technologies on a small scale. The pilot project was completely self-funded by Yin-Chi Lee, with the help of University of Auckland supplying studio rehearsal space. 

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