Angel-faced actress and artist India Menuez is right this minute sewing together zines that will be on sale at the debut of her new “play-thing” in Brooklyn tonight.
There will be two performances of “The World of Chibi Cherry,” her new kind of, sort of, almost play, which she has written and will star in, along with a cast of friends including photographers Michael Bailey Gates and Claire Christerson. Like everything India and her collaborators do, it will exist in a strange and magical space between art, theatre and playing dress-up in insane dollar-store wigs and D.I.Y. avant-garde costumes.
Billed as a “multidimensional day-in-the-life depiction of the destined to be pop-hit-teen-sensation Chibi Cherry,” the piece will be performed in the “Model Home,” a life-sized doll’s house built by performance artists Monica Mirabile and Sigrid Lauren (also known as Fluct). The action will follow the journey of an almost-famous teen, played by Menuez, as she faces “the trials and tribulations of the internet, the mother daughter dynamic, cowboys, equestrian fetishism, post-yoga and vague religion” — everything you need for a mind-expanding and life-affirmingly weird experience.
India told i-D: “Chibi Cherry started as my excuse to explore movement in performance, but her capabilities as a vessel grew when I started to question her origin. I thought about all the people around the person in the ‘spotlight’ and how much more interesting the peripheral story can be.” She added, “I feel so grateful to be a part of an art community where I can call every single person involved in this project a friend.”
Tonight at 9PM and 10PM at Secret Project Robot, 389 Melrose Street, Brooklyn. Doors open at 8PM.
secretprojectrobot.com
Credits
Text Alice Newell-Hanson
Photography Keetja Allard