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$0-$60
Pieces of Me
Fri, Jun 5 | 7 pmTHEATRE Y
$0-$60
About
“No one ever talks about the moment that you found out that you were white. Or the moment you found out you were black. That’s a profound revelation. The minute you find that out, something happens. You have to renegotiate everything.”
-Toni Morrison
Special Guest Performances of
PIECES OF ME
Love and Silence Under Apartheid
Written and Performed by Bo Petersen
June 5th and 6th at 7 PM
LOCATION: Theatre Y - 3611 W Cermak Rd, Chicago, IL 60623
Pieces of Me is a profoundly moving and personal story of the unspoken histories that many people carry with them. An exploration of family secrets, with resonances that still echo today. With her cousin, Chris Petersen, providing the musical accompaniment and with musical direction by Royston Stoffels, this multi-layered piece of storytelling renegotiates personal histories and asks questions about identity: “Who are you if you can no longer be who you are?”
Pieces of Me is an autobiographical play that exposes the devastating emotional cost of living secretly as a mixed-race family under the vicious racist apartheid regime and the legacy it bore. Her father Bemjamin Johannes Petersen, also known as Benny, made a fateful decision in 1944 that would change his life forever. Until then, he and his close-knit family were classified by the South African Government as “Coloured.”
After meeting and falling in love with Bo’s mother who was white, he decided to pass as white. They had five children and were happily married for 62 years.
They lived as a white family. He never told his wife or any of his children about his true identity. It was a secret that, if uncovered, would have had dire consequences for all of them. Benny could have faced 10 years imprisonment, his marriage would have been annulled and his children taken away reclassified and made wards of the State. Pieces of Me explores how her father’s torturous decision to pass as white has shaped Bo’s life. It captures universal themes of exclusion, threat, and silence experienced by marginalized people throughout the world.
This is Bo‘s renegotiation
-Toni Morrison
Special Guest Performances of
PIECES OF ME
Love and Silence Under Apartheid
Written and Performed by Bo Petersen
June 5th and 6th at 7 PM
LOCATION: Theatre Y - 3611 W Cermak Rd, Chicago, IL 60623
Pieces of Me is a profoundly moving and personal story of the unspoken histories that many people carry with them. An exploration of family secrets, with resonances that still echo today. With her cousin, Chris Petersen, providing the musical accompaniment and with musical direction by Royston Stoffels, this multi-layered piece of storytelling renegotiates personal histories and asks questions about identity: “Who are you if you can no longer be who you are?”
Pieces of Me is an autobiographical play that exposes the devastating emotional cost of living secretly as a mixed-race family under the vicious racist apartheid regime and the legacy it bore. Her father Bemjamin Johannes Petersen, also known as Benny, made a fateful decision in 1944 that would change his life forever. Until then, he and his close-knit family were classified by the South African Government as “Coloured.”
After meeting and falling in love with Bo’s mother who was white, he decided to pass as white. They had five children and were happily married for 62 years.
They lived as a white family. He never told his wife or any of his children about his true identity. It was a secret that, if uncovered, would have had dire consequences for all of them. Benny could have faced 10 years imprisonment, his marriage would have been annulled and his children taken away reclassified and made wards of the State. Pieces of Me explores how her father’s torturous decision to pass as white has shaped Bo’s life. It captures universal themes of exclusion, threat, and silence experienced by marginalized people throughout the world.
This is Bo‘s renegotiation
THEATRE Y
2649 N FRANCISCO