INTIMATE ACTS OF TRANSLATION: PERFORMANCE COLLECTIVE CHAEPANI’S METHODS OF CREATING INTERCULTURAL PERFORMANCE Rosalie Purvis, Ph.D.Cornell University, 2020 ABSTRACT The year 2015 began with the greatest number of displaced people across the globe since the Second World War. More than ever, those of us who have lacked the luxury of a place to call “home” yearn for stories and performances that connect us across conflicted borders. In response to this global crisis, I joined forces with Kolkata based Arts Collective Chaepani, whose work centers around topics of migration and crossing cultural barriers. Together, we have to date created six multilingual plays and performance pieces that grapple with border topics and forge profound cross-cultural connections. We tour our shows to multiple sites of border strife. In each location, we invite community members to share their stories so that we might pay them homage on stage, thus evolving our project as we move through diverse communities. As we travel, our stories, our language(s) and the very rhythms of our lives intersect and deepen. “Intimate Acts of Translation” is a “Praxis as Research” (PAR)-themed dissertation that draws upon my ongoing collaboration with Chaepani and demonstrates a multi-step methodology for intercultural performance practice. “Intimate Acts of Translation” argues that, in order to connect people across cultural and national borders, we must interrogate our esthetic, linguistic, and cultural biases, and embrace performative realities that emerge from the rhythms of migration, diaspora and border spaces. I analyze how touring diverse border spaces shapes our affective experience of performing, and, in turn, guides us and our audiences to navigate what Gayatri Spivak calls “the double bind” of cultural conflict and inequity. Each chapter of “Intimate Acts of Translation” describes one of Chaepani’s performance projects as a methodological case study, framing each method in terms of both performance theory and practice. Each case study describes specific practices of multilingual scripting, intercultural and physical acting, and hybridized forms of dance and music and reveals how these techniques transform cultural barriers into spaces of intercultural intimacy.