script and video: Cynthia Ling Lee

choreography and performance: Cynthia Ling Lee and Shyamala Moorty

music: Derrick Spiva, Jr. and Ravindra Deo

running time: 15 minutes

Super Ruwaxi: Origins tells the origin story of how Wu Ruwaxi, a nerdy Chinese-American teenager, becomes Super Ruwaxi, a feminist super-heroine with magical gender-bending body odor.  Inspired by American and Indian comic book traditions, the piece hijacks and reinvents cultural material ranging from Superman to Judith Butler’s gender theory to the Hindu apsara, Urvashi.  Super Ruwaxi: Origins creatively mashes together theater, multimedia, contemporary Indian dance, and audience interaction to create a live comic-book story about queerness, coming of age, and the cultural tensions inherent to immigrant experience.  Developed through the Post Natyam Collective's long-distance creative process.

Note: Super Ruwaxi: Origins is currently being expanded into an evening-length work with dramaturg-director Alison De La Cruz.  The work will premiere in San Francisco at the FURY Factory Festival of Ensemble Theater.