Photo by Holly Peterson. Courtesy of MN Daily

Pangea World Theater and Teatro del Pueblo (both Knight Arts grantees) have been collaborating since 2010, co-presenting work in the annual Political Theatre Festivals and with productions like Luis Alfaro’s “Oedipus El Rey,” Sandra Cisneros’ “House On Mango Street,” and last year, with Nilo Cruz’s “Lorca in a Green Dress.” But their latest endeavor together, the world premiere of “Bandara” by Aravind Enrique Adyanthaya, takes their partnership in a new direction. It’s the first of three co-commissions in the companies’ Latino Asian Fusion Series, a collaborative presentation of new works “intended to highlight the intersections, relationships, and influences that exist between Latino and Asian cultures.”

In his introductory remarks just before the opening night’s performance of “Bandara,” Teatro del Pueblo artistic director, Alberto Justiniano described shifting regional demographics, substantial and ongoing growth in both the Latino and Asian-American populations. He said, “We want to start a conversation between communities. It’s never been more important for us to understand each other,” and to find common ground between the two cultures.

“Bandara” is the first of three planned productions in the joint Latino Asian Fusion Series.

To that end, “Bandara” playwright, Adyanthaya, couldn’t be a more fitting artist with whom to launch this series – a person with mixed family heritage, of both Puerto Rican and East Indian descent, Adyanthaya has long been interested in creating work that mines the complex weave of contradiction and commonality of his lived experiences in two very different cultures.

Playwright, writer and performer Aravind Enrique Adyanthaya. Photo courtesy of Pangea World Theater

“Bandara” is an intimate, spare production – just a small cast of players and a few sticks of furniture – some chairs at audience level and raised above the crowd, a bed. The play’s projected text and clever lighting serve well to add texture and dimension to the action on stage. The actors each assume a number of roles, and they do so with aplomb, conveying subtleties of character and emotional depth with just a few words and minimal gestures.

It’s a play told in three, nonlinear, overlapping but only loosely joined narratives: one set in New York City; the second, in an orphanage in Trivandrum, a coastal town in India’s state of Kerala. The third section is the riskiest, for that part of the play is driven forward by stories submitted by audience members and is contingent on a willingness not just to engage, but to collaborate in the storytelling. The thread connecting these disparate sections is a hallucinatory, tenuous one: there are monkey men/monsters harrying them all; persistent questions of identity and interconnection and the weight of history and culture in individual lives; there’s play with the vagaries of time and a fluid sense of home in all of the above.

“Bandara” is an understated play, but a bold, affecting one nonetheless – and it’s a work that bodes well for the two companies’ future collaborations.

“Bandara” by Aravind Enrique Adyanthaya is the first of three new plays commissioned for the Latino Asian Fusion Series, a collaboration of Pangea World Theater with Teatro del Pueblo. The show runs from May 2 through May 18 at the Old Arizona Studio, 2821 Nicollet Ave., Minneapolis. For more information, visit Pangea’s web page.