Kasper is a folk character from central Europe, the star of the traditional puppet theater. In Kasper as a Banana, a Chinese Kasper is bitten by a materialistic distortion of the American Dream – a vision of a consumer’s paradise kindled by the return of his successful businessman cousin to China. This Kasper, a fast-talking wiseacre immigrant, will do anything to make it in the U.S. and become a “banana”, an Americanized Chinese person. His misadventures illustrate the difficulties experienced by New York City’s Chinese immigrant community, and raise issues common to every immigrant community newly arrived on American shores.

Kasper as a Banana is performed with the contemporary puppetry technique of object theater, using found objects, food items and kitchen utensils to portray its characters. This serio-comic social commentary about immigrants is our telling of the story of the immigrants aboard The Golden Adventure, a ship crammed with illegal immigrants from China which ran aground off New York City in 1993.