How can a social justice theatre performance continue to effectively engage audiences and create an impact beyond its stage? This was the question that TerryandTheCuz asked themselves after SK!N had its final performance in Melbourne in 2018.

SK!N is a contemporary performance based on true stories about human trafficking. The work uses dance, participatory performance, and lecture demonstrations by Malaysian human rights NGOs to spark a multi-faceted, empathetic, and critical response to human trafficking, by immersing its audience in the lived reality of people subject to debt bondage, forced labour, and sex trafficking.

Following its Malaysian premiere, SK!N travelled to Australia in 2018 for a season at The Abbotsford Convent in Melbourne. In expanding the production’s reach, TerryandTheCuz spent four years working closely with human rights organisations such as Tenaganita in Malaysia, Welcome To Australia, PRACE, ACRATH, and Multicultural Arts Victoria to gain community insights and facts which feature in the work.

Here’s a taste of ‘SK!N’ when it was performed in Malaysia in 2016. 

SK!N is in discussions to have its European premiere in the Netherlands in 2025 and as a limited engagement immersive performance and experiential gallery which will coincide with the United Nations General Assembly in New York City in the near future.

The SK!N Project is an interactive website that engages users to focus on the supply and demand chain of the human trafficking trade and how the consumption of certain services or products perpetuates this vicious cycle. The personal journeys of victims are also highlighted through the website, along with abuses, enforcement, and government policies that propagate this heinous trade.

Curated, laid out, and presented in a path-finding way, the website will thematically engage users to examine their own complicity in the process and it is hoped that by the end of the experience, users become aware of their privilege, choices, and collective responsibility.

“Our aim is to now explore new presentation models by reimagining this project in the digital sphere; where we want to create an online experience based on the original production which will focus on human trafficking stories in Kuala Lumpur. The process will then be replicated in one city on every continent thus creating a digital anti-trafficking awareness universe; for example, one could be on the New York City portal and purely by clicks be ‘trafficked’ to the Melbourne portal,” explained Govin Ruben, Co-Director of TerryandTheCuz.

“To successfully achieve this we collaborated with new media art collective Filamen, re-engaged previous community partners such as Tenaganita, and also expanded our partnership to include other Malaysian human rights organisations such as North-South Initiative, Project Liber8, and Persatuan Sahabat Wanita Selangor to gain new insights and update our findings. The digitised research for our new website now not only expands the reach of the SK!N performance but also creates broader awareness about human trafficking through access to resources and acts as a precursor to our upcoming community engagement in the Netherlands and New York,” elaborated Govin.

The launch of the website was lauded by the National Strategic Office (NSO) Malaysia Council for Anti-Trafficking in Persons and Anti-Smuggling of Migrants (MAPO), who shared a short statement in solidarity.

“Indeed this is a great achievement and a new promising milestone that blends well with this year’s theme of the World Day Against Trafficking in Persons 2023 – ‘Reach every victim of trafficking, leave no one behind’. Having said this, NSO MAPO hopes to attain more collaboration with all our partners in Malaysia namely TerryandTheCuz, IJM, SHUT, Tenaganita, North-South Initiative, Project Liber8 and Persatuan Sahabat Wanita Selangor, and other like-minded organisations. Thus, we hope that this website will serve as a junction for people fighting human trafficking by creating pathways to useful information and the reporting of abuses,” said Syuhaida Abdul Wahab Zen, the Undersecretary of NSO MAPO, Ministry of Home Affairs.

Also in attendance at the launch were representatives from Tenaganita, North-South Initiative, and Persatuan Sahabat Wanita Selangor, as well as founders of other notable human rights organisations, well-known activists, and members of the media.

“The website could not have been possible without the support of all our valuable partners and we thank them for joining hands with us in raising awareness and educating the public through new mediums. And of course, we would like to invite all Malaysian individuals and agencies that are involved in anti-trafficking activities to reach out to us via the website so that we may include links to their organisation and create a wider, more supportive net in fighting human trafficking,” said Govin.

Learn more about The SK!N Project.

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Cover image supplied by The SK!N Project. This press release was lightly edited by Sukhbir Cheema to suit Eksentrika’s editorial direction.