Priyo@Parlay, July 7

You are cordially invited to join us for the first showcase in a new monthly open mic and performance series, Priyo @ Parlay, hosted by Sunset Park’s cafe and restaurant, Parlay, on Sunday, July 7th, 2024, 5:30pm-8:30pm. (Doors 5:30 pm, show at 6:00 pm)

Throughout the Asian continent, communities of artists often gather in small, intimate settings to share work, connect, eat, make merry, and make kin of one another. Folks would remove all the furniture in their homes, create a makeshift stage, and perform poetry, music, dance, and monologues. Families are made and remade within this intimacy against a hostile world. There are many words for this across cultures, but our communities often default to the Persian and Urdu term, “Mefhil.” It was with this vision in mind that Ashna Ali and Sean Devare partnered with Parlay Brooklyn to create Priyo @ Parlay, a reading and music open mic and showcase hosted by Parlay.

In Bengali, priyo means dear or beloved, favorite, or precious. We decided to to create a series committed to supporting and uplifting local artistic community and immigrant-run businesses that feels precious, by beloveds for beloveds, to celebrate the genius and love of poetry and performance.

We have a keyboard available for open mics, and food, beer, wine, and non-alcoholic options available for purchase. The space is wheelchair accessible. Open mic sign-up in-person right before the event begins!

OUR HOSTS:

Ashna Ali is a queer, diasporic, and disabled Bangladeshi poet, writer, and arts organizer raised in Italy and based in Brooklyn, NY. Their work explores the intersections of identity and liberation struggle as we live them day-to-day in the rich chaos of our beloved communities.

Sean Devare is a Brooklyn-based performer and designer who bridges ancient and contemporary practices in theater, visual art, and music as communal events. His dual Indian and Chinese heritage often inspires his personal work, but he seeks to learn from and find kinship in as many cultures as he can.

OUR LINE-UP:
Noah Thing Deleuze is a trans-dimensional apparition temporarily inhabiting this human sphere. Do not be afraid. They are here to help. IG: @noah_thingdeleuze

Deepali Zeer is a composer, performance artist, and theater practitioner. Their work circulates ideas around madness in relation to the colonized and feminized body. She works in (dis)order to upheave and unravel. Her artistic practice has been supported by the Brooklyn Arts Council, NYSCA, the Axe-Houghton Foundation, and the NYC Women’s Fund. Recent and ongoing performance works include United States v. Gupta and I Love You Stranger.

Tanaïs is the author of In Sensorium: Notes For My People, winner of the Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction, and the novel Bright Lines, a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award, and the Brooklyn Eagles Literary Prize. Their forthcoming novel, Stellar Smoke, will be published by Dutton Books in 2025. They are the founder of their eponymous independent perfume house, TANAÏS, and based in Brooklyn, NY.

Manish Melwani (he/him) is a Singaporean writer of strange and monstrous fictions that skulk the borderlands of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. He attended the Clarion Writers’ Workshop in 2014, and then completed a master’s thesis at NYU entitled Starports, Portals, and Port Cities: Science Fiction and Fantasy in Empire’s Wake. His work has been published in Nightmare Magazine, Lontar: The Journal of Southeast Asian Speculative Fiction, and at Tor.com.

See you there!

Host or Publisher Priyo @ Parlay