Salon 2: At Puneeta’s, “In their Footsteps”

Two months later in June 2018, Kate brought her friend/collaborator’s theater company, Infinite Variety Productions into the SFL experience. IVP would perform in another friend– Puneeta’s living room. This time the performance segment was an early version of another award-winning play, “In their Footsteps,” the untold stories of women who served during the Vietnam War. This salon too was a first for some of the women, who gathered in the living room that day. Sofas and chairs ringed all around– Kate and the rest of the cast in-motion, the audience watched site-specific immersive theater. Nirupa opened the evening with an excerpt, a story from her own life. And once IVP were done with their excerpt, much after the talk-back, Sophie (the original digital nomad) led the audience through an exercise– the non-bio bio. A career document reframed to hold family history. Yah Sophie, the creative genius! People talked about an unknown grandmother, the role of mothers and fathers and much much more. Before the exercise, half the room knew itself and half the room did not. After the exercise, the women in the room had been seen and heard and borne witness to in ways that they had not anticipated, in ways we had not anticipated. Intimacy and trust have always been a divine by-product of our gatherings and we stumbled upon it.