By: C Icart, Humour Editor
“Do you like living in Vancouver?” That’s the first question Maiden China (Kendell Yan’s drag persona) asks her co-star SKIM (Romi Kim’s drag persona) during their show YOU AND I ≠ WE as part of the rEvolver Festival at The Cultch. What follows is a long answer reflecting on what it means to be a racialized settler on unceded, unsurrendered xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) territory. But how did I get here?
Well, the first time I fell in love with SKIM was during Pride last year. Their moving drag performance to the song “King” by Florence + the Machine left no eye dry in the crowd. The first time I fell in love with Maiden China was while watching this cheeky little number she did to Jessica Simpson’s “With You,” where she removes white t-shirt after white t-shirt until there’s nothing left but two tiny white t-shirt pasties. Frankly, I fall in love with drag as an art form every time I see a performance.
So, as soon as I saw the ad for YOU AND I ≠ WE, I knew I had to go. Drag and theatre? Sign me up. The show is described as “a collaboration between Romi Kim (they/them) and Kendell Yan (she/they), performed by their drag personas.” They collaborate often, and I’d pay money to watch SKIM and Maiden China do literally anything. Heck, I’d pay to watch them eat on stage! Oh, wait . . .
In all seriousness, the section of the show where they eat together is my favourite. They share shrimp chips, juice boxes, and Pop Rocks, chewing loudly and sighing into their mics. It’s lighthearted and wholesome as they feed each other foods from their childhoods and savour every bite. During the talkback after the show, they highlighted the cultural significance of that part.
The show references some of their previous performances. I appreciated getting insight into how they felt during other performances I’d also seen. The talkback felt like an extension of that as well. Kim and Yan talked about the origins of the show but also their ideas for future iterations, as the show is a work in progress. In our interview, Kim said, “We actually wrote it during the pandemic where we weren’t getting very much gigs. [. . .] We were seeing a lot of callouts for BIPOC creators, but we kind of felt like this burden of, ‘Why do we always have to talk about our identity in order to prove that we should be making art, to get funding to make art, or be part of a show?’”
In the future, they’re considering performing at Eastside Studios’ newest venue, The Birdhouse, and they might include video projections. The current iteration has minimal set pieces, relying on a few crates and props that are stored within them. During the talkback, Kim expanded on the use of crates in their practice as it is common. They associate the crates with moving and, by extension, movement, transformation, and flux.
YOU AND I ≠ WE “shares insights into vulnerable experiences and gestures of refusal in being consumed by the audience’s gaze.” When I asked Kim what they were hoping the audience would take away from the show, they answered that they hoped the audience wasn’t only white. How they tackled these topics clearly shows that this is not meant to be an educational moment for the whites and the cis-hets. They share on their own terms, which is apparent when SKIM speaks Korean without providing a translation, for example.
I’d call the performance an honest and vulnerable love letter to community, diaspora, queer and transness, and their bodies. And man, oh man, I’m going to be around as long as Kim and Yan keep writing.
Do I like living in so-called Vancouver? As a Black francophone, I wonder this often. The answer is complicated, and it shifts like the seasons — but I do know I love the community I’ve found out here with people who also have messy answers to that question. Shows like YOU AND I ≠ WE are where I go when I want to be reminded I’m not alone.
To stay up to date for their future projects as well as future iterations of YOU AND I ≠ WE, you can check out Romi Kim’s website, romikim.com, and SKIM and Maiden China’s Instagram @skimisme and @queenmaidenchina.
