Strategic Narratives: The Embodiment of Minority Discourses in Biographical Performance.

The author and his four close friends collaborated on a collective biographical performance project in late December of 2002 which resulted in a performance piece entitled "The Body Politic: Common Conversations on Gender and the Nation." This paper documents the process undertaken as they prepared to represent their personal and collective memories of immigration, integration and assimilation into Canada's multicultural mosaic. Biographical performance provides an art form and a platform for individuals marked as visible and invisible minorities. When it crosses and blurs the borders between separate minority discourses, it has the potential strategically to unsettle dominant interpretations of Canadian identity.