13 - The Art of the Asian American Movement’s Social Protest Performance

Summary

This chapter focuses on Harry Elam's theory of social protest theater to galvanize support and direct sympathizers toward campaigns of political resistance. Looking at the musical trio A Grain of Sand and the theater work of Sining Bayan's political performances provides an opportunity to analyze movement art beyond the written text to foreground movement art as a social experience, a form of interaction between people, sound, and space. A Grain of Sand's performance of Asian American as ordinary American is a radical re-embodiment of Americanness. A Grain of Sand casts Asian Americans' ordinariness as Americans emerging within histories of racism, US imperialism and capitalism. The chapter also focuses on the internationalist politics of Bayan's political plays to underscore the progressive transnational political practice at work in Asian American movement art. The theater of Bayan puts in focus how theater constituted political action for organizing against President Ferdinand Marcos's martial law.