INTRACULTURAL EXPLORATIONS IN PERFORMANCE: LLOYD FERNANDO’S SCORPION ORCHID

The focus of this article is on intraculturalism in the adapatation and performance of Lloyd Fernando’s Scorpion Orchid, looking at the staging of the play (adapted from Fernando’s 1976 novel), by Krishen Jit and the Five Arts Centre. Fernando’s novel questioned racial positioning and belonging within the nation. I suggest that the play uses intracultural performance to take this questioning a step further; the performance represents a means of resisting and questioning the essentialised and monolithic cultural and racial identities constituted by the state in accordance with official policies of multiculturalism and multiracialism. Where multiculturalism posits a policy of harmony through separation, intraculturalism seeks active engagement with other cultures, leading to the exploration of new, possibly hybrid, spaces of expression. This move towards hybridity challenges the state’s insistence on difference. Intracultural exchange is, potentially, a site of dialogue and interaction which can challenge the rhetoric of harmony and separation apparent in state discourse.