Aloha, Aloha, or When I Was Queen
Opening Night: April 4, 2018
Closing: April 21, 2018
Theater: Abrons Arts Center Henry Street Settlement
In 1996, a young Eliza Bent and a friend created, directed, and starred in an amateur historical film for a school project. In it, Bent portrayed Hawaii’s last reigning monarch, Queen Liliuokalani. Now, 22 years later, Bent’s home movie has become a starting point from which audiences are led on a journey that grapples with personal history, legacy, and cultural appropriation. In the tradition of Spaulding Gray, Fran Leibowitz, and David Sedaris, Bent’s humorous, cringe-inducing stories chart a young Bostonian’s education in race and appropriation.
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April 9, 2018
“Throw a scone,” Eliza Bent says, “and you will hit a white person who has had a brush with appropriation.”
Cultural appropriation, that is — the practice of borrowing from cultures less powerful than one’s own, in the process often trampling blithely, if unwittingly, on sensitivities.
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