4/11/13 Feeding the Masses and 25 Years of Asian Improv aRts

Prep for Banteay Srei Fundraiser

The People’s Kitchen

Sita Bhaumik in her kitchen.

Download the show by clicking here.

At this year’s Empowering Women of Color Conference at UC Berkeley, Kearny Street Workshop organized a workshop with Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik that provided examples and resources for combining your love of food and commitment to activism. Tonight’s show features three people who are feeding the masses:

• Sita organizes home-cooked dinners serving 50 or more people. This serves as a bi-monthly fundraiser for Leftwing, an anti-imperialist, community-based soccer club;
• Saqib Keval is founder of The People’s Kitchen, a five-year-old, sliding-scale, community restaurant project that does political education and grassroots mobilization through food service;
• And Elizabeth Sy is co-founder of Banteay Srei, which provides social support, healing arts, reproductive health education, life skills-building, and leadership development for young Southeast Asian women impacted by sexual exploitation. One of these strategies is to connect young women to each other and their elders through cooking. She also cooked for the Bike Down, an amazing three-day bike tour that raised money for Cycles of Change.

To start things off we talk with Francis Wong, co-founder of Asian Improv aRts which is celebrating its 25th anniversary.

Asian Improv aRts 25th Anniversary Celebration at Yoshi’s. Photo by Walter Wagner.

Community Calendar

Want a taste of the tasty goodness Elizabeth Sy produces? Throw down $10 and get some homemade goodies while helping the Visibility Project–a national portrait and video project dedicated to  collecting the stories of Queer Asian American Women, Trans, and Gender non-conforming communities across the country!  $10 will get you a small jar of one of the following:

• soy butter crack (soy sauce and buttery goodness)
• cambodian corn sauce (corn will NEVER be the same, can also be used with other veggies)
• Sy stanky steak sauce (ginger/cilantro/fish sauce is perfect for any grilled meat or veggies)

Email: iheartfishsauce@gmail.com to put in your order!

Tonight was the world premiere of The River at ACT’s Costume Shop. Richard Montoya of Culture Clash collaborates with Intersection for the Arts resident theater company Campo Santo, and its co-founder Sean San José, to create this play that explores themes of identity, California and its people, and the many types of borders they encounter and cross. It runs Thurs-Sun at 8 p.m. until May 4.

Friday night, Narika hosts a “Happy Hour to Empower” at the Pork Store Cafe in San Francisco’s Mission District from 6 to 9 p.m. https://www.facebook.com/events/211510218973472/

On Saturday there’s Earthquake: The Chinatown Story, a series of programs at the Chinese Historical Society of America including a new exhibition, performance by Charlie Chin, and a book signing with Philip Choy.
https://www.facebook.com/events/567355709966065/

Later on Saturday, awarding winning poet, novelist, and playwright R. Zamora Linmark will be at the Bayanihan Community Center.
https://www.facebook.com/events/385708698203587/?ref=2