Chang and Eng and Me (and Me)

“There’s an image that I’ve carried around with me for the best part of 30 years. My brother and I read about it when we were kids…”

Tobi has spent most of his life with a weird, romanticised and probably quite orientalist image of the deaths of Chang and Eng Bunker – the original Siamese twins – in the back of his mind. He isn’t sure why. Recently he discovered that like him, they were of mixed Chinese heritage, and perhaps the first such performers to make it big in the West. In doing so they carved out an uneasy space in the rotten heart of the American dream.

Using puppetry, music and striptease, this is a show about diaspora, assimilation, and siblinghood; about what happens when you don’t know how to read yourself, and about reaching across history in search of a reflection.

Commissioned by Chinese Arts Now and New Earth Theatre