Sahar Sepahdari-Dalai

Over the past year, I have developed a family of characters called the Pepper Johnsons. I play both the roles of Pepper, the matriarch, and her boyfriend, Danny. Their child is a wind-up Frankenstein toy named Sammy. I developed the Johnsons out of a desire to understand my invisibility as a Middle Eastern American and someone who is being pushed into a white capitalist identity. In this installation, I furthered my exploration by developing the concept of family as a fluid gender-neutral unit. In creating the roles, I brought in elements fantasy and gave participants the choice of playing baby, mom, or dad. The scripts included speaking in tongues in response to a Mitt Romney speech, giving birth, and being inspired by George Bush to build war machines. The Pepper Johnsons world originally existed in video form, but I was interested in taking it outside of the screen. In the tradition of Brecht’s theater, I attempted to involve the audience in the performance. On the night my thesis was presented, Pepper directed the public in short scripted videos in the installation, a domestic space I had built for the family and filled with surreal sculptures. The Pepper Johnson home was at once a video installation, a video set, and a site for live performance art. For each performance, I allowed in three members of the public, who acted under Pepper’s direction after looking over the scripts. The entire space was green- and blue-screened. Parts of the videos are currently filled with YouTube and Google search images. This is a work-in-progress.