Elisabeth Gunawan's mythological horror blends puppetry, dance, theatre and film to explore the effects of a family's relocation from Hong Kong to the US.
The hungry ghost of Buddhist and Chinese traditions – a ghoul with a huge stomach and small mouth, tormented by insatiable appetite – is a fertile figure for storytelling. In Gunawan's Prayers for a Hungry Ghost, for her company Kiss Witness, it is combined with another staple: the double. The play centres on non-identical twin sisters and examines, through a supernatural family drama and a mix of theatre, dance, video and puppetry, the dynamics and dysfunctions of the immigrant experience.
The girls' father (Daniel York Loh) has left Hong Kong to build an apparently successful life in the US, a place where he has never seen so much food. Their mother is absent and unidentified, but seems to haunt the stage as a silent background figure (Tang Sook Kuan) who sometimes shadows the action or helps with props.
