For author Marcel Proust, the taste of a single madeleine cake had the power to evoke vividly detailed childhood memories.
Millions of expats around the world have the same experience when enjoying the food they grew up with, but rarely are they given a forum to share those stories. Abhishek Thapar’s gently moving and deeply thoughtful dinner party provides just such a vehicle for three expats living in Amsterdam and another three who have made Adelaide their home. Entering the performance space, we’re asked to separate from our companions and take a seat at one of three tables laden with food. It’s a gentle way to ensure that we are fully immersed in our surroundings and ready to take in the stories that emerge, and by putting everyone on equal footing it stimulates conversation from the outset. Each table hosts one expat each from Amsterdam and Adelaide, and they use their chosen dishes as a trojan horse to tell the stories of how they came to their new homes and the experiences that awaited them before moving to the next table.
Singer/songwriter Elsy Wameyo serves up traditional Kenyan kachumbari salsa and sukuma (stewed greens) alongside sliders that represent the food she learned to bring in her school lunchbox to avoid being alienated by the other children. Other recipes have evolved into palimpsests which tell stories large and small. The ingredients in a Johor Bahru laksa serve as a record of centuries of migration, while a personalised Long Island Iced Tea with cinnamon from India and genever from Amsterdam records a happily peripatetic life.
This leads to the idea that traditions are important because they connect us to where we come from, but sometimes they need to be changed. A cup of chai simultaneously serves as a joyful reminder of home and the decision not to follow the Karwa Chauth ritual that requires wives to fast and pray for their husbands. This theme of home as a fixed entity in the past and a mutable concept that can be adapted and carried within is one that recurs throughout the night.
DyspOra, a rapper who learned to put 'Gabriel' rather than 'Erjok' on his CV, muses about the ongoing effects of the colonial scramble for Africa, the irony of being told to return to his country by people whose ancestors invaded it and the feeling of being an 'Austr-alien' who is Australian when he succeeds and African when he fails in between dropping rhymes and feeding us. He’s an eloquent speaker who has made a living telling stories from the stage, but the opportunity to hear his and his colleague’s deeply personal perspectives on migration and home in this intimate setting is a privilege.
The project’s success can be measured by the fact that the conversations continued long after the performance had officially ended.
