How To Be Accepted
How to Be Accepted is a 45-minute performance that explores themes of participation, guilt, and belonging through a series of interactive, comical, and emotionally charged prompts. The piece engages the audience in an active role, blurring the line between voluntary participation and compulsion. From navigating the space in darkness to offering Filipino snacks with racially charged humor, the performance alternates between moments of levity and discomfort, compelling the audience to confront their assumptions and biases. How to Be Accepted is a provocative meditation on identity, privilege, and the delicate balance of connection and alienation.
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The performance begins in darkness, with the audience guiding the artist using their phone flashlights—a reflection of performative "helping" behaviors and an expansion of the spectator’s role into active involvement. Offering carioca, a traditional Filipino snack, to white audience members becomes a layered act of hospitality, critiquing the lengths marginalized individuals go to seek inclusion.
Screaming into jars symbolizes the silent, internal suffering we all carry, while the act of sharing fragile poetry creates a moment of vulnerability, asking the audience to hold it delicately. By blending humor, discomfort, and raw emotion, the work interrogates how we connect, exclude, and strive for acceptance in a fractured world.
I would like to thank Winnie Ho for inviting me to Cosmos Electrique's second edition and for the support and helpful feedback! To Danse Cite's team for trusting me with my approach and vision ! David Wong for the documentation photos. And of course Pinoy Pansitan for the yummy cariocas. Finally, shoutout to the people that continuously inspires me to keep fighting <3
Special thank you's to these people for the love:
Vincent Bolduc
Giang Pham and family
Florence Mailloux
Laurence Dionne
and to friends that came,
i love you from the bottom of my heart.