“How does climate disaster affect our sense of belonging?”
BURNING WILD, created by Debórah Eliezer in collaboration with Vidhu Singh, Noor Adabachi and Cynthia Ling Lee is a devised performance, incorporating physical theater and dance, created in response to the California wildfires of 2020. It began as a community gathering circle to support Northern Californians affected by the wildfires. Recent 2020 fire survivors themselves, Debórah and Noor draw from their lived experience using personal stories of their relationship to home and placemaking from The Middle East to the Bay Area told through devised text, song, movement, documentary video and puppetry to tell a collaged docu-myth about the land, displacement, trauma and renewal offering artists and audiences an opportunity for resilience, hope and community healing in a time when a prolonged megafire season is an annual occurrence.
BURNING WILD was selected to work in a week-long residency at the prestigious Summer Residency Lab, The Ground Floor: Berkeley Rep’s Center for the Creation and Development of New Work which brings artists to Berkeley to work on projects in 1–4 week residencies. All residency artists went through rigorous covid-testing and only worked outside. Creations include sculptures from burnt ephemera, poetry, dance and a site-specific ritual rounded out a week marked by the 1-year anniversary of the Walbridge Fire in Sonoma Co.
Burning Wild
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