PHILADELPHIA — Raising Type 2 diabetes awareness through culinary comedy, Asian Arts Initiative presents The Cooking Show, an interactive culinary and storytelling experience conceived by performance artist/playwright Robert Karimi. The artist’s revolutionary chef alter ego will host a series of PBS cooking show-style performances May 16-19 at Asian Arts Initiative’s Salon space (1223 Vine St.).
Incorporating music, documentary-style video, storytelling, political discussion, humor and live cooking on stage, chef “Mero Cocinero Karimi” teaches communities of color about the epidemic of Type 2 diabetes and how cultural cuisines, stories and rituals can be used to combat the disease. Audiences are invited to taste menu items and help prepare the recipes along with Mero and his culinary comrades.
Through this interactive theater experience, Karimi — whose extensive research for the project includes discussions with health, food and nutrition experts — explores America’s relationship to food and ponders how we might improve that relationship, for the sake of public health. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) names Type 2 Diabetes as one of the leading causes of death in communities of color, and the rates of this disease are skyrocketing daily. Doctors and scientists have devised multiple strategies to prevent and even to reverse this disease, but the solutions are neither accessible nor palatable to the people who need them most. To that end, Karimi’s lighthearted storytelling/cooking shows are meant not only to make audiences laugh, but to give community members the opportunity to put into practice the ideas he presents in the show, as well as provide them with resources to continue the practices at home. These ideas include websites and meet-up groups with a focus on healthy lifestyles, access to cooking circles and field trips to farmers markets.
“We are thrilled to be hosting The Cooking Show in Philadelphia,” says Gayle Isa, Executive Director of Asian Arts Initiative. “Mero Cocinero’s unique twist on storytelling, and his ability to blend so many cultures, are perfect ways to achieve our goal of addressing social issues and building a sense of community.”
Schedule of Events
The Cooking Show
May 16-19
Youth Workshops (free, with advance registration required)
Wednesday, May 16, 4 p.m. (for middle school students)
Thursday, May 17, 4 p.m. (for high school students)
Performances ($20 general admission, includes meal and show)
Wednesday, May 16, 7:30 p.m.
Thursday, May 17, 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, May 19, noon and 7:30 p.m.
Family stories, humor, music and education about Type 2 diabetes will be served up alongside delicious and healthy culinary samples by Mero Cocinero and his culinary comrades.
Family Style Open Mic ($5-$10)
Fri., May 18, 7:30 p.m., Asian Arts Initiative, 1219 Vine St.
In addition to the Cooking Show performances, Mero Cocinero Karimi will make a brief guest appearance at Asian Arts Initiative’s monthly open mic night. Hosted by spoken-word duo Yellow Rage, Family Style Open Mic engages the Asian-American community — as well its extended “family” from all communities and cultural backgrounds — to share stories through poetry, spoken word, hip-hop, dance and comedy.
About Mero Cocinero Karimi
Mero Cocinero Karimi, Robert Karimi’s culinary alter ego and the host of The Cooking Show, is an idealistic Iranian-Guatemalan chef to revolutionaries, dreamers and community builders. He used to work for a nonprofit organization in San Francisco, but after budget cuts demoralized the staff and the organization, he had a life change, and pledged to feed the world’s hunger for justice, unity and a good meal. As a child, he helped feed the masses during the freeway marches in the ’70s and fed demonstrators during the rallies, and now teaches people that eating healthy and together is a revolutionary act. Mero is a proud graduate of the Paolo Freire Culinary Institute, and has cooked for such luminaries as DJ Peanut Butter Wolf, Poets Tato Laviera, Jose Montoya, Yuri Kochiyama and Michele Serros, hip-hop superstar MF Doom, Dolores Huerta’s son, Cesar Chavez’s cousin’s friend, Phillip Veracruz’s intern and many others. For him, “The revolution starts in the kitchen, one kitchen at a time.”
About Robert Karimi
Robert Farid Karimi is an interdisciplinary playwright/poet from the San Francisco Bay Area. A National Poetry Slam Champion, and a Def Poetry Jam poet, he has been performing for more than 20 years and feeds audiences a mixed bowl of humor, pop culture and personal history served in dish of energetic interactive performances. He is the creator of the critically acclaimed works: Self (the remix), Farid Mercury and The Cooking Show; his performances have fed audiences across the Americas in theaters, grocery stores, backyards and even off-Broadway. His work has been published and recorded internationally in Callaloo, Latino Literature Today and Raza Spoken Here 2, and most recently featured in Total Chaos: The Art and Aesthetics of Hip Hop. Karimi has collaborated with the likes of Guillermo Gomez Pena & Laurie Carlos creating site-specific performances such as Shaving Time, Cactus in the Desert, McMuertos and Discochurch: Church of Donna Summer. A UCLA graduate, Karimi was the first performance artist to be invited to be a resident at the Kohler Factory Visual Arts Residency, and has received awards for his work from the National Endowment for the Arts, Illinois Humanities Council, Zellerbach Family Fund, Minnesota State Arts Board and the National Performance Network. Karimi was recently honored as a 2009 Creative Capital recipient to create The Cooking Show.
The Cooking Show is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation Fund Project co-commissioned by Intermedia Arts in partnership with Asian Arts Initiative, Kaotic Good Productions and NPN. The Creation Fund is supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Ford Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency). For more information, visit www.npnweb.org.
