Caught In Between is the story of emerging Malaysian-Australian artist Danielle Lim’s experience of migrating to Australia with her family in 2014. Combining original soundscapes, video projections and live interactive storytelling, this multi-disciplinary work strives to immerse the audience, who will become active participants, between a series of memories associated with Malaysian and Australian culture, blurring the line between these cultures. This multi-disciplinary performance recently premiered at the Adelaide Fringe Festival.
As a successful recipient of the Adelaide Fringe Fund grant, Caught In Between marks Lim’s first solo-devised project as well as her debut as a Fringe artist. Lim (Coldhands, 2023) is passionate about sharing personal stories as she reconciles what it means to be ‘Asian-Australian’. The story explores perceptions of mental health, race, body image, and domestic violence, defying cultural stereotypes in both Asia and Australia.
A very interesting premise and using different disciples to present her work is definitely no easy feat. In a recent interview with Being Asian Australian, Lim introduces herself and discusses aspects about herself and what motivates her to do this work.
“My name is Danielle Lim and I am a Malaysian Australian artist and creative. I am in the emerging stages of my career as an actor, writer and theatre maker. My passions lie in the creative sphere and making work that champion Asian Australian voices and advocate for our community. I also hope through my work, I am able to inspire more Asian Australian artists in our community in South Australia”.
Asides from the summary of what this multi-discipline performance is all about, Lim talks about what this theatric performance Caught In Between means for her personally, what inspired her to create this and how it will resonate with those checking it out.
“Yeah, Caught In Between is multi-disciplinary theatre work. It explores my motivation, opportunity and upbringing through a series of memories. It is a combined video, online over soundscape as well as interactive storytelling to create an immersive world that transports audiences between both my Malaysian and Australian cultures and different places that I have been”, Lim stated.
The personal story behind this performance is brave and courageous. This is testament to the strength and spirit of Lim. The topics presented in her performance were heavy and serious and a conversation how how this all made her feel and how she balanced creativity with these topics were a major point of discussion.
“Yeah, it has been particularly difficult for me at times when creating this production. I had many questions about how would I explore the notion of cultural identity and compare that to my own experiences – not just as someone with an Asian background, but also as just a human being. During the process of creating, I was thinking a lot about the interpretation about my childhood growing up in Malaysia and some of the issues I experienced growing up with identity and with mental health. The main aim of this theatre production is to show the community that they are not alone in facing issues like what I experienced and I hope it can help those still experiencing them the opportunity to start to heal”.
Finally, the question about the diversity environment in South Australia’s creative space was posed. With the issues around anti-Asian hate since the start of the pandemic – the Asian/Asian Australian community is just slowly recovering and healing – this is not saying that the racism has stopped, but there is a lot of healing from trauma to happen. Lim discussed this and mentioned that there needs to be more saturation of Asian Australian faces in the creative space to change negative narratives and enact change.
“I think particularly in South Australia, there isn’t just a lot of diverse work. Here the Asian Australian community is so small in terms of artists and those in the creative space. For me I make efforts to go out and meet other diverse artists and then we try and collaborate – that is how we can show ourselves here. I think we have to move beyond just seeing what we do as ‘cultural work’, but see it as working towards dispelling negative stereotypes and that is how we can change negative narratives”, Lim expressed.
This is one badass Asian Australian woman, trying to push things in Adelaide and the greater South Australian community – someone we should continue to support as she is going places!
To check out more of Lim’s work, please check out: https://www.actnowtheatre.org.au/danielle-lim
Header image taken by Ben Allen and provided by Danielle Lim