While I inch along with my creative community building projects, I am thinking of creativity in a new way.
Maybe it’s an old way. The oldest way, possibly.
Creative as in sustaining life.
Passages
2019 Begins Again
\Back
& /Forth
I’m expecting this turn around the wheel to be completely new and utterly familiar. As I move forward, I draw from my rich well of experience in theater and storytelling for social change!
What are you expecting in 2019?
Photos by Aidan Un, Presented by Intercultural Journeys, 2018.
Directed by: Rania Lee Khalil, Video Art: Gazelle Samizay, Musician/Composer: Alex Shaw
There is a Portal is growing. Thank you to all the partners who helped develop the work and to audiences who engaged with the interactive dialogue.
Now that folks have said “WE WANT THIS” I am building up the foundation so we can offer it to educational and community spaces that serve immigrant/refugee/diaspora youth. We want this to be a vehicle for youth to create and share their own stories and build spaces of belonging.
Contact me to support this effort.
"There Is A Portal is so profound in its vulnerability, its honesty, its way of opening up and out into the community of witnesses." - Audience Member
"Thank you for a wonderful and inspiring performance. It means a lot to me as someone with American/diaspora stories I hold in my body." - Audience Member
"I hope you have the opportunity to share this with the world. I love how the audience is invited to be so present and inside the experience." - Audience Member
Upcoming Events
February 23-24
Two-day Forum Theater Workshop: Explore the technique of Forum Theater.
Participants will learn the basic skills needed to create, perform and lead the Forum Theater format for use in their respective communities. We will explore our bodies as a tool of representing feelings, ideas, and relationships and explore collective solutions to everyday problems.
5th Annual Women’s Conference
March 4, 2019
11:00am, Panel discussion: Teaching As Activism
BMCC Main Campus
Fall Keeps Moving
Looking Ahead
Around and In: Making New Work, Connecting with the Past
Back on Stage
Plan, Work, Fall
New Day (Now Rouz), New Waves
Happy Spring! — Nowrouz Mubarak! For those of you who have been thrashed around by the waves of winter, do not despair! The shore is near. This winter, my experience of being in the world has felt like one of a sea lamprey attached to the fin of some great whale. Yes, I get food, great soul-enriching sustenance from doing what I was born to do, but the ride is not an easy one.
Longest Night
Tonight, we will pass through the longest night of the year. We will regain a tiny bit of light, with each new day. The end of 2013 seems to have opened a thousand little doors of terror inside me. This is the first time I am “properly” developing a play. That means I’m not jumping right into a production process but taking time to write, re-write, show it to others, share my thoughts, and hear the words read aloud. It’s brought me face to face with many of my feelings of inadequacy, superiority, futility, and desperation. It’s been a long night in the life of this artist.
On Thanksgiving, Giving Up
After co-leading a wonderful weekend workshop looking at the ways we internalize our defeats and let oppressive messages stop us from going after our deepest desires, I am still asking myself “do I have the courage to be happy?” That depends. Do I know what makes me most happy and am I able to see it and feel it clearly? By clearly I mean am I able to see past the layers; the media images of happiness, the broken record of social messages about happiness, the fear that covers any impulse to disbelieve the imposed voices. While the U.S. is meditating on thanks and having (we talk about giving thanks but isn’t it always focused on what we have — a series of things on a checklist — like a Christmas list?) I’m walking away from the deeply held notion that I need more money to do what I most want.
Aerial Roots
The famous banyan tree in India has aerial roots. That means small seedlings growing on its branches send down vine-like extensions that upon hitting dirt, take root and anchor the tree. If left unchecked, a single banyan can expand into a maze-like thicket of its own creation. A tree intertwined around another tree, creating shadow trees. I’m living in a similar metaphoric spiral right now. Thoughts shooting straight downward, leading to confusion, leading to pause, leading to insights, leading to growth.
How to value difference?
How do I talk about difference without putting a value judgment on it? If one thing is different than another, must one thing be better than the other? How can I value multiple experiences, approaches and perspectives while keeping a sense of self? Must I choose one as better so that I can hold on to something familiar? This project is different than the rest of my work in Afghanistan. I am not working directly with a theater group, I am working with media makers; writers, producers, researchers from Equal Access, Afghanistan. I am training them in methods of participatory storytelling for community engagement and social change
Life Interrupted
This week was a long week with lots of prodding and pushing. We were telling stories about oppression, personal experiences of oppression, something simple, clear. I started by asking them to make a frozen body sculpture of one such experience. After the activity, we spoke about what they were showing. It turns out no one made an image of something from their own life! They made images from other people’s lives, images from stories they heard, or things they saw. They were finding it hard to access those personal stories, without compounding them with others.
I’m Alright … But It’s Not OK
Poetry of Life
Through struggle we bring forth the ripened fruit of a changed tomorrow. We never stand still; motionless as life breezes by. We move in the wind. Sometimes with it, Sometimes against it. Ever changing, we remake our reality. This past week I have been changed by the fortitude, brilliance and endless capacity of Afghan artists.
Working Hard for the Money
Consumed
It’s that time of the year again. Spring is creeping up on us, new shoots are poking up from the ground and festivals of regeneration and re-birth are taking place around the world. In my ancestral part of the world, South and West Asia, the festival of Holi, (celebrated in South Asia) and Norooz (celebrated in West Asia), are coming up this month. Holi is March 8, Norooz is March 20th. Both feature fire, a meditation on righteousness and lots of color.
Winter Events
Since returning from Kabul last month I’ve jumped back into NYC life with both feet! Now I find my schedule full of speaking events and workshops from February through March! If you will be in NYC on any of these dates, please come to one or more of these events. I’d love to see you. And as always, please forward this to anyone who you think would be interested.
Sweet and Sick
Today is the holy day of Ashura where, in Islam, believers mourn the death of Imam Hussein, the prophet Mohammed’s grandson. Imam Hussein was fighting a great oppressor and on this day he and his entire family and followers were massacred and left in the desert of Karbala. This story is most important to Shi’ia Muslims a they believe Imam Hussein to be the rightful successor to the prophet Mohammed. Sunnis also believe this day to be sacred and attribute other reasons to the observance like the day god forgave Adam.