Blog by Michèle Steinwald
Published by Plays Inverse Press
Like live theater, Your Healing is Killing Me by Virginia Grise is easily experienced in one sitting. Previously delivered as a performance, this manifesto intertwines the personal and the political and is written by a “daughter of a Chinese Mexican immigrant.”
The text is a tallying of sorts: lists of childhood events, trips to healers (curandera, acupuncturist, black market doctor, and a “nice case worker” at a free clinic), PTSD symptoms and diagnoses, ingredients for a bone soup recipe, along with fragments of conversations and corresponding random thoughts.
Rhythmically interlaced with exercises from Chairman Mao’s 4 Minute Physical Fitness Plan and excerpts from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, the book’s enumerations also include directions to significant locations around New York City and questions, lots of questions. One dream sequence shared led to meeting and collaborating with composer Fred Ho in real life. Funny/not funny is the Master Cleanse episode as a result of advice from “a fast girl and shit talker,” one of Grise’s weaknesses.
An open-ended experience reading Your Healing is Killing Me, some questions are repeated but one stated as “the only [one] that matters” is, “Are you a Revolutionary?” Although originally performed in 2015 and then published in 2017, the ending speaks to this time and invites you/me/the reader to breathe, “breathe with me.”
Michèle Steinwald is a Canadian dance producer and arts administrator.