We sat down with Elisabeth Gunawan to discuss the award-winning KISS WITNESS’ latest production. Prayers for a Hungry Ghost powerfully combines horror, physical performance, live cinema, dark comedy and Chinese mythology in a mesmerising family drama set in the underworld (the realm of the hungry ghosts), to explore the intergenerational trauma born from the pressures of meeting society’s impossible standards.
Prayers for a Hungry Ghost draws deeply from diasporic and migrant experiences. How do you see theatre – as practiced through KISS WITNESS – as a space where belonging can be created or reclaimed?
In Chinese mythology, ‘hungry ghosts’ are the reincarnated souls of those who were selfish, envious or greedy. These beings have large, insatiable bellies and flames in their mouths, turning everything they eat into ash. I think this is such a potent image to explore the fractures in diasporic migrant identities!
The story is set in the nightmarish underworld of hungry ghosts, focusing on a Chinese family: Father migrated from a life of poverty in Hong Kong to become a capitalist success story. Meanwhile, his daughters’ lives spiral in opposite directions: Little Sister ascends to classical piano stardom, while Big Sister is ravaged by a mysterious illness. Each path eventually leads them to the same pit of despair and insatiable hunger, unless their familial bond can somehow transcend the cycle of inherited trauma.
Ghosts are often portrayed as playful or scary clichés this time of year. How does your work invite audiences to engage with them as something more complex, even sacred?
Sociologist Avery Gordon says ghosts are part of our social imagination—they show us what is hidden or unresolved in our collective life. Ghosts aren’t merely astral beings; they can be memories, questions, or questions that constantly linger at the corner of your eye. When something burrows into your soul and won’t let go, when you can’t think of thinking of someone or something, isn’t that also an experience of being haunted? Horror as a genre, therefore, is a potent way to give form to silenced narratives, erasure, and trauma.
In Indonesia, where I’m from, horror films are hugely popular. They often act as stages where morality, tradition, and identity get tested—but they also reproduce patriarchal and misogynistic ideas. My work tries to open these hauntings as spaces for reflection, complexity, and even care.
This piece has been in development through the Barbican’s Open Lab. How did that environment of experimentation and risk-taking shape the work?
Barbican Open Lab is one of the few programmes that truly empower artists making experimental work, driven by inquiry and constantly reimagining form to best tell the story. The text is only one part of the piece; we had to constantly reiterate to discover its whole world, and how to welcome an audience into it. The story of what happens to this family is less crucial than how we position it to the audience. The Hungry Ghost Festival, the one time in the year when the boundary between living and dead falters, became our frame. We want audiences to peek into this feverish world of snuffed-out desire and thwarted dreams, where every element, from performers’ bodies to space, lights, and video, must come together.
What have you discovered about your own artistry through working with this ensemble and creative team?
Theatre is powerful because every artistic choice—lighting, sound, staging, rhythm—guides how an audience listens and where they place attention. As a theatremaker, I can shape their sensory, mental, and emotional experience, inviting them into a reordered universe. I still mourn that East and Southeast Asian perspectives are so rare, and that our bodies are often borrowed to present Eurocentric narratives (think Miss Saigon). Prayers for a Hungry Ghost instead brings audiences beneath the surface of lived experience into a psychological landscape shaped by intergenerational trauma and systemic racism.
This world is idiosyncratic, messy, neither pretty nor triumphant. With KISS WITNESS, we create pieces centring historically marginalised perspectives. It means some audiences will find our work alienating or incoherent, but more others more have felt seen and witnessed by the stories and perspectives we highlight.
What do you hope the audience will carry with them after the performance?
I hope audiences leave feeling seen, in some small hidden corner of their being. Trauma often isolates us, convincing us we’re alone in our pain. But that’s rarely the full truth, because even our most personal wounds are shaped by broader systemic forces. Recognising this opens up space for solidarity, for witnessing each other’s grief, and towards some hope for repair.
Prayers For A Hungry Ghost by KISS WITNESS world premiere in The Pit, Barbican runs Wed 29 0ct – Sat 1 Nov 2025. barbican.org.uk (Standard £20, £10 Young Barbican tickets available)