Performance Review: DUMMY IN DIASPORA. By Esho Rasho.

A slight young man (Esho Rasho) sits on a white couch, alone, contemplative.  Behind him, deep red and gold carpets hang; the shifting lighting takes on an eerie tone. Tension envelopes him; finally, he speaks to us in a conversational, almost chipper voice. He leans forward, “My name is Essa, and I think something is really wrong with me.” In Dummy in Diaspora, a “coming-of-age solo play” written and performed by Esho Rasho, insistent, personal storytelling is the centerpiece of a semi-autobiographical narrative of diasporic longing and familial love. Making his US premiere after a run with Dummy in Diaspora at the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Rasho, a first-generation Assyrian American writer/performer, comes to the Chicago theatre scene with an achingly earnest performance that reminds us that home is the people we love as much as the place we live.

Part of an emerging cohort of SWANA artists (many of whom are writing and performing their own work) embracing the specificity and complexity of their identities in new and bold ways, Rasho has refined Dummy in Diaspora over the last few years. First germinated during his time obtaining a BFA in Acting from The Theatre School at DePaul University in 2023, Dummy in Diaspora showcases an emerging SWANA artist willing to experiment with form and content. A refraction of his personal narrative, the queer diasporic tale is successful as a solo performance supported by strong, yet restrained production design at Jackalope Theatre, where it was directed by ensemble member Karina Patel. Rasho’s Dummy is one of two recent new Assyrian Iraqi plays in Chicago (Iraq but Funny at Lookingglass as well).

Rasho’s Dummy is a non-linear, interlocking series of vignettes that follow Essa's (who is Rasho’s funhouse mirror reflection) emotional journey and growth from childhood to high school through early adulthood in a SWANA immigrant household. Rasho weaves together various threads: Essa’s coming of age as a young queer SWANA person, his learning English as a second language as a child, his struggle with addiction to nicotine, and his mother’s cancer diagnosis. Dummy is a series of monologues directly addressed to the audience, punctuated with reenactments of conversations that have shaped him. Rasho inhabits Essa’s mother, his European clubbing friends, and his white therapist, among others; these interspersed quasi-dialogues serve a rhythmic change in the performance, often lending a comedic tone to painful revelations. Throughout Dummy, Rasho aptly handles the challenge of a solo act with multiple characters and narrative threads.

The scenic design from Scenic/Prop Designer Olivia Volk, Lighting Designer Maaz Ahmed, and Sound Designer Newton Schottelkott support Rasho’s storytelling through both aethetic abstraction and by creating specific zones: a couch in the family home, a chair in the therapist’s office, and a clothes rack in an apartment are situated in front of layered, hanging red carpets and bronze clocks which seem to levitate behind Rasho. Both literal and liminal in representation, the stage exists as a space between reality and surreality. Ahmed’s lighting design exemplifies how Dummy plays with the boundaries of what is real; Essa’s nicotine addiction coalesces as an auditory and luminous green presence named Nic. The addictive entity disrupts Essa’s storytelling, the lighting becomes alien, bathing in Rasho in green; Nic speaks to him through recorded, distorted audio. The various parts of the production work together, using the intimate space to its full extent, highlighting the deft direction by Jackelope Theatre ensemble member Patel.

In the narrative of Dummy, Rasho investigates and digs into specificity; Essa is the child of an Iraqi Assyrian father and Lebanese mother who met at immigration; both are now proudly American. Children of the post 9/11 era, Essa and his sister struggle with their parents' patriotism. Rasho touches on feelings about immigration, becoming a citizen, and the census as a young Middle Eastern person in the United States. His Essa reflects on the legacies of his parents’ homelands and migrant experiences, from which he feels he is profoundly disconnected. Essa wonders, struggling with a gnawing internalized second-generation diasporic guilt, that if just a bit, if his parents are right-- he is privileged to grow up as a young queer man in America. To me, this sentiment is made even more bittersweet as rights and protections for both immigrants and queer folx are attacked in today’s America in the months since the production.

Throughout Dummy, Rasho also draws on themes of dysmorphia and queerness in the explorations of Essa’s warped body image and his growing addiction to nicotine. Rasho’s Essa isn’t perfect or always sympathetic; his choices are sometimes fraught and many times unhealthy. His mother’s sudden cancer diagnosis parallels his struggles with body image; Essa fights to take care of himself, going to therapy even though he finds it cliché and very American, while admiring the strength of his mother, her own body wasting away during chemo treatment. This dissonance and disruption, as Essa compares himself to his parents, wondering if he can live up to their expectations, is where the narrative shines; Rasho gives an extremely human performance of diasporic longing.

Rasho’s Dummy sometimes overflows narratively, skipping from snapshot to snapshot. All of these disparate stories dovetail in Essa’s recollection of learning English in a public school ESL class, where he is assigned to retell his favorite movie, The Wizard of Oz, as an exercise. The eerie green Nic, the bravery of his mother, the advice of his therapist, and the friends he has met along the way mark his own journey. For Essa, home is something we are always looking to return to, though finding the way can be confusing. Dummy in Diaspora is a smart and poignant solo performance highlighting an exciting new artist, Esho Rasho. He is a vibrant part of a cohort of SWANA artists in Chicago, making a strong entrance with stories that are human, complex, and timely. I know I’ll be looking for what Rasho does next with anticipation.