Play Text: The Life and Work of Petrović Petar

Abstract

There is nothing original about The Life and Work of Petrovic Petar. After the performance, when audience members asked me why they had never heard of him before, the uncanny truth was revealed. Petrovic Petar does not exist in real life. He was created out of experiences, sam- ples and images, stories told to me, and all the various media I have consumed during my lifetime in the places in which I have resided. Yet his image in front of them, through the embodiment by Jason Potgieter, and the presented ‘facts’ of his adventures, and his human search for an identity and a home, had created a full, believable biography. His existence was an articulation of my own rhizomatic cultural associa- tions, the creative expression of someone whose development might be identified as that of a third-culture kid, an attempt to capture the experiences of a migrant who dwells through creative acts.