THE DNA TRAIL Silk Road Theatre Project
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The DNA Trail isn’t seamless—with seven distinct voices, how could it be? But on the whole it’s a smart and challenging production, directed with clarity by Steve Scott, that focuses far less than one might expect on identity politics. At its best, it’s a poignant meditation on how difficult it is to recognize the impact of our immediate families, much less whatever came down to us through the double helix of history.
First up is Elizabeth Wong’s Finding Your Inner Zulu, in which Cricket, a Chinese-American high school basketball star (the sparkling Jennifer Shin) discovers that her “vertically challenged” status will keep her out of contention for scholarships and the WNBA. With the help of Emma, her cheerleader sister (Melissa Kong), she takes a trip into her own DNA a la Fantastic Voyage to see if she can fix her chromosomal disadvantage. There are some kitschy touches—a genetic dominatrix in a lab coat (Cora Vander Broek) seems intent on eradicating Emma for reasons that aren’t clear, and the rabbi and Zulu warrior that the girls encounter in their genetic line have a central-casting generic quality. But the feel-good message about not letting your genes influence your sense of self-worth makes the piece appealing as a light curtain-raiser.
Shishir Kurup’s Bolt From the Blue follows Rishi (Mozaffar), a divorced Indian writer living in Los Angeles, as he tries desperately to reach out to Hari (Stamper), his depressed young cousin in Scotland who’s made multiple suicide attempts. Staged as a series of dialogues conducted via phone and e-mail, the piece reminds us how much the terror of inheriting mental or physical illnesses can color our daily lives.
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