This is where you are always home. This is where you are never home.
Pooja Nansi was born in India and came to Singapore at the age of one. Her story and her history bear the weight of travellers past – from her parents’ decision to settle in another country, to her grandparents’ border-crossing romance. Her answer to the question, “Are you Singaporean?”, is infinitely complicated. After all, where and how do you even begin to testify on behalf of the ghosts in your blood? And how do you speak when you do?
Through a heartfelt, humorous mix of her trademark poetry and storytelling, Pooja attempts to find a place for her family’s messy sprawl of stories in orderly Singapore. You Are Here transforms faded family photos, snatches of song, hazy childhood memories, and even the tiniest daily microaggressions, into a meditation on migration, love and the pleasures and anxieties of belonging. As Pooja soon discovers, a map doesn’t provide you with answers – it only suggests where you should begin.
You Are Here was first performed to great acclaim as part of Checkpoint Theatre’s What I Love About You Is Your Attitude Problem in November 2015. Thereafter it was staged at Kalaa Utsavam – Indian Festival of Arts in 2016. This production has been reimagined and updated in collaboration with award-winning theatre director Edith Podesta.
About Pooja Nansi
Pooja’s latest and third collection of poetry, We Make Spaces Divine, was published in January 2021. Her key performance work includes Thick Beats for Good Girls, which explored the intersections between feminism, identity and hip hop. She was a recipient of the National Arts Council Young Artist Award in 2016. She is also the co-founder of Other Tongues, a literary festival of minority voices, and is the current festival director of the Singapore Writers Festival.
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