Study of Skin

Conception, Performance, Video

Study of Skin

ChuanFest 2026 (in-version ensemble)

@ 122 Community Center, NY

@ 3AM Theater, Astoria

Concept, Performance, Script, Video: Jane Su

Sound Design: Silvan Tang

Photo Cr. Ruby Wang

Conceived and performed by Jane Jian Su, Study of Skin is a three-part lecture performance project—part live showing, part video, and part performance score. This live showing unfolds over 30 minutes, combining live cinema, lecture, performance, poetry, and moments of herbal tasting. Moving between demonstration and embodiment, it asks what it means to “study” a body from both scientific and experiential perspectives.

When the performer first arrived in America, the first shower she took caused her skin to break out. Her body flared—sweat, eczema, heat. She remembers almost nothing of that house, only a brief, flinching night. But her skin remembers: burning, itching, sensing a new space before I could. From this point, the performance begins to shift. What starts as a lecture gradually becomes something more unstable, moving between observation and sensation, between a body that is examined and a body that speaks.

Study of Skin unfolds through this oscillation. Scientific diagrams of dermatitis and the boiling of Chinese herbal medicine coexist on stage, tracing the lineage of the eczema that humans are born with. The performance operates through a double dramaturgy. On one hand, it engages scientific perspectives on dermatology. On the other hand, it renders skin through lived experience. From what perspective is this so-called study presented? Does the “I” belong to the performer, the subject under examination, or to something collective? Are these experiences hers, or yours, or ours?

In dialogue with Bertolt Brecht’s notion of “scientific theater,” Study of Skin asks how “scientific” performance can become—and how much trust we place in a form that constructs truth through artifice. If science promises objectivity and theater foregrounds illusion, where do they meet?