MAP Fund | Springboard for the Arts

2011 | Past Grantees | Grantee Events Calendar

About the Grant

$30,000 to support The Cooking Show con Karimi y Comrades: Diabetes of Democracy, a live cooking performance created by Robert Farid Karimi that engages communities of color in conversations on the epidemic of Type 2 Diabetes and how cultural cuisines, stories, and rituals can be used to combat the disease.

About the Project

The Cooking Show con Karimi y Comrades: Diabetes of Democracy (Diabetes of Democracy) takes the familiar PBS cooking show format and remixes it in order to reach communities living and struggling with Type 2 Diabetes, which The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention named as one of the leading causes of death in communities of color.

Using music, documentary-style video, storytelling, humor and live cooking onstage, performance artist/playwright Robert Farid Karimi creates an interactive theater experience that explores America’s relationship to food & our environment. Audience members actively participate in the show: members help prepare the meal, take a sensory journey, and taste the recipes.

For Diabetes of Democracy, Karimi’s extensive research and discussion with health, food and nutrition experts, as well as interviews with Type 2 diabetics and their families, will be used to create culturally-specific cuisine, stories, and rituals that audiences can reuse in confronting this epidemic.

Performed in both traditional venues and as site-specific "happenings" in food-related public spaces (grocery stores, taco trucks, flea markets), Diabetes of Democracy will tour several US cities in 2011-2012. Each production will be personalized for the specific community utilizing local & organic directors, artists, and technicians.

Related Websites

Robert Karimi

The Peoples Cook

Diabetes of Democracy

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