How far back can you trace your lineage? You likely know where your grandparents lived and grew up, but what about their parents, or the ones before them? Do you still carry on their traditions, or have they been worn away by time into mere legends or half-forgotten songs? Coleen Shirin MacPherson’s Searching for Aimai, directed by Raha Javanfar, tackles these questions and more as her character struggles to hold on to bits of her dual heritages – not just for herself, but for her unborn child as well.

Our narrator’s body is ready to give birth: the contractions have started and she can tell that the baby is coming. But is she ready? It’s the winter solstice and she wants to celebrate Yalda night properly, with pomegranate and watermelon. In the moments between her contractions, she begins to worry about what she’ll tell her daughter upon her arrival; she’s half Parsi-Indian and half Irish, born in Canada, so what will that make this child? Through a mix of movement, story, and projection, we go through what she knows of her past and the traditions which her mother has passed down to her. In the search for her identity comes the search for her great-grandmother, Aimai, and the legacy of resilience she hopes to carry on.

MacPherson’s script got me thinking a great deal about my own ancestry, and how the passing on of traditions is so essential to our understanding of ourselves. My mother is half Syrian, but because my grandmother married someone of European descent, that became the predominant set of traditions for my immediate family. Thank goodness, my grandmother can still cook delicious Arabic food (which I miss immensely), but I don’t know if she even knows any Arabic words any longer. MacPherson’s character faces a similar cultural erasure, as her mother chooses to see herself as Canadian rather than a Parsi-Indian woman living in Canada. Though she did pass on some cultural knowledge to her daughter, much of it gets lost to time and assimilation. This feeling of otherness and complexity, and not knowing which box to check on government forms is felt by many, particularly in North America where the majority of people have either themselves immigrated here or are the descendants of immigrants.

Shannon Lee Doyle has transformed the BMO Incubator into a bathroom with what’s arguably a dream tub at the centre. Tile covers the floor with tetris-like pieces askew to the sides and the back wall is used to depict Laura Warren’s projection designs. I really enjoyed how the contractions were presented, with flashes of light and a lightning bolt of pain projected onto the wall; I don’t know what contractions actually feel like, but I imagine it’s quite like what those moments portrayed.

MacPherson gives a passionate and deeply personal performance in Searching for Aimai. Deftly navigating her pregnancy belly while still giving her all in a movement-filled production, you can feel the story resonating within her. There’s a level of vulnerability to perform something so close to your heart in front of an audience, and I can’t help but admire those who take the leap to do so.

Searching for Aimai is a heartfelt and beautiful look at what makes us us. Where do we find that sense of self? Is it in our present, or is it comprised of little bits of our past? MacPherson truly lays out her soul in this play, while asking us where we find our own.

Searching for Aimai runs in the BMO Incubator of The Theatre Centre until March 1. For more information and tickets, visit: https://theatrecentre.org/event/searching-for-aimai/

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Cover Photo: Coleen Shirin MacPherson. Photo by Seanna Kennedy.

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