A Taste of Her Portmanteau
By Annie Sears
A culture has many defining characteristics: language, social structure, traditions, values. These elements draw people together, helping us understand our own humanity by understanding the group we belong to. One element of a culture is especially human—food.
No matter who you are or where you come from, you need to eat. And when you share a meal with others, you slow down, sit together, and converse. Food quickly becomes more than food. “In Nigeria,” says Dr. Awam Amkpa, a theater professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, “food is a peacemaker at the core of inventing community—not just the communities we have, but as a way of producing community. When even total strangers come to your home, we use food as the foundation for that relationship.”
In Her Portmanteau, playing at The Strand through March 31, characters share two traditional Nigerian foods onstage: afang soup and fufu. On February 24 and March 3, Eko Kitchen—a Nigerian pop-up kitchen here…
A culture has many defining characteristics: language, social structure, traditions, values. These elements draw people together, helping us understand our own humanity by understanding the group we belong to. One element of a culture is especially human—food.
No matter who you are or where you come from, you need to eat. And when you share a meal with others, you slow down, sit together, and converse. Food quickly becomes more than food. “In Nigeria,” says Dr. Awam Amkpa, a theater professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, “food is a peacemaker at the core of inventing community—not just the communities we have, but as a way of producing community. When even total strangers come to your home, we use food as the foundation for that relationship.”
In Her Portmanteau, playing at The Strand through March 31, characters share two traditional Nigerian foods onstage: afang soup and fufu. On February 24 and March 3, Eko Kitchen—a Nigerian pop-up kitchen here…