Whispering Portals is a multidisciplinary theater work that weaves together music, dance, and visual media to explore identity, belonging, and democracy through the lens of women’s stories. Conceived as a duet between two award-winning immigrant artists—choreographer Preeti Vasudevan and composer and multi-instrumentalist Clarice Assad—the work unfolds as a theatrical journey shaped by personal history, traditional and contemporary vocabularies of dance and music, Indigenous lullabies and storytelling woven into an Augmented Reality experience that brings a timelessness to the journeys shared by women from different walks of life. 

Rooted in storytelling by and about women, the performance evokes themes of land, migration, and cultural inheritance. Movement becomes memory, and sound becomes testimony, as the artists translate their lived experiences into a shared artistic language. At the center of the work is a deeply personal investigation: What does it mean to be an American woman? How do individual choices and cultural narratives influence our understanding of land, identity, and home?

The performance draws from personal storytelling and journeys between the two protagonists, interwoven with the stories of Native American matriarchs through timeless lullabies that connect the human spirit with land, migration and the self. Placed in a fantastical and timeless space of AR where stories transcend time, Whispering Portals aims to transcend the stage—inviting audiences into a space where the personal becomes political and the artistic becomes communal. The work asks us to listen deeply, imagine boldly, and reflect on how the voices of women—so often unheard—can reshape our democratic ideals and realities.

Duration: 20 or 60 mins

Music: live and recorded

Space: designed to include AR and theatrical performance with lighting, sound, and live and recorded music