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.
Walking, Releasing, Flowing
Nourishing Transformation
I am a Rock
Star-work & Earthbound
The Sun
My son is about to celebrate his first year on earth
I am shepherding a new life as I steer toward a new paradigm.
My family went into lockdown on Friday the 13th of March. In these two and a half weeks I’ve reached the conclusion that no matter how grumpy I get, the sun won’t stop shining. Sounds funny, but I’ve caught myself on a number of occasions grumbling about the sunny clear skies. Why won’t my surroundings mirror and comfort me exactly as I need them to? I see the buds bursting on the trees outside — spring flowers aren’t subject to our regulations nor do they bend to our desires.
I’m grateful to have become a mother this year. As a support my son to grow into his fullest self, to explore the world and make room for him to do so safely (who knew everything in my living room was a hazard to a small life?) I am pulled back from the thoughts of terror and uncertainty to the concrete and real. To watch him, all joy and pulsing life, I am witness to the cyclical nature of everything. Beginning, Middle, and End. The earth won’t stop turning toward the sun no matter how much we exert ourselves and create worlds that defy nature. My son won’t stop growing and dreaming because he can’t play outdoors.
During the huge shifts we are undergoing each one of us will inevitably face our inner voice - both the unconscious, unhealthy patterns of thought as well as the higher self.
Which one will you listen to? Which one will you breath life into?
My latest one-woman show and community building project, There is a Portal will continue. I am convening a fabulous pedagogical and community engagement team and in the fall, we will work across 5 freshmen seminar courses at Queens College to create networks of belonging across race/class/gender and across campus. How might a new student see their world and the possibilities it holds if welcomed into their educational journey through participatory storytelling, deep listening, and personal-political explorations of history? I’m eager for the question to unfold.
In 2003 I created a one-woman show to raise awareness and repair the damage that had been wrought in so many lives after 9/11. I’m pasting the text of my artist’s statement below. Just replace COVID 19 with 9/11.
Image by Gazelle Samizay
Whether it’s man-made crisis or natural rhythms, we are offered the opportunity to try again.
To move in a new way in order to create a new story.
We are being pulled through a portal toward the unknown.
We are being shown what is possible if we all move together - in the direction of healing and hope.
With love,
Kayhan
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
November Shows + Workshops
I'll be performing my new one-woman show, There is a Portal, in Philly and NYC November 9 and November 29th. I'd love to see all your beautiful faces in the house! Please invite friends and family.
Fall Keeps Moving
Around and In: Making New Work, Connecting with the Past
Back on Stage
Plan, Work, Fall
Spring Brings New Things
My newest project, Documented cIRCA 86: Immigration Reform Turns Thirty (cIRCA '86) is an oral history and multimedia public engagement project that celebrates the lives and accomplishments of immigrants who were legalized through the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986.
Exhibit Opens Sunday!
The Time is Now
We have one week left for you to support the healing and transformational work that telling our stories can accomplish.
The Muslim Women’s Story Lab is working to keep all of us human and to have our humanity recognized through storytelling, community engagement, and the arts.
As media personalities and political candidates spread divisive messages of fear and misinformation, this is an important time to reflect on how we choose to recognize and uphold the humanity within ourselves and each other.
With one week left in our fundraising campaign we need you more than ever.
The Force is With You
In today's climate, story and art are more necessary than ever. We need these important tools. The Muslim Women's Story Lab is a unique and hopeful approach to mobilizing Muslim women around issues that they face using storytelling, theater and art-making.
I’m asking if you will direct some of your power to back this project which has brought tremendous hope and light to me in these troubled times.
It is winter for the forces of oppression … the spring belongs to us!
Join me to sow seeds of peace, unity, women’s power, and creativity!
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/muslim-women-s-story-lab#/
Launching the Muslim Women's Story Lab
I am so pleased to announce the launch of the The Muslim Women’s Story Lab! The Lab builds women’s capacity to lead creative, culturally resonant community engagement projects within the Muslim community using strategies that harness and reclaim Islam's empowerment of women.
Making It
Hello Everyone:
3 exciting things below! My writing, an event at the NYC Municipal Archives, and the Muslim Women's Story Lab moves forward!
A short piece I wrote on making art, diversity, and compromise, was just published in Montrealserai -- a lovely online webzine focused on arts, culture and politics!
Here's a little excerpt to get you interested:
"So I look down at my feet. My sandals are touching ground where Diego Rivera once stood, or sat, or walked by. I’m pulled into a world which, when he was creating it, was all but banned subject matter. Poor people’s lives, indigenous lives, didn’t matter. He made space, literally, by painting giant public murals that projected the sound and color, history and memory of poor and working class people in Mexico. And he showed not only what he knew to be true, and beautiful, but what he knew had power to change the world." Read on ...
And here in New York, I'm making the final preparations for a discussion at the NYC Municipal Archives on the history of sterilization abuse in NYC and the struggle for change.
Thursday, July 9, 2015
5:30 pm - 7:30 pm
Please RSVP to: visitorcenter@records.nyc.gov
31 Chambers Street, New York, NY 10007
We have a terrific panel and will be displaying archival materials from the women's own collections. Here is one example of what you'll see:
Courtesy of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party Archives.
Last but not least, I got great news that the Muslim Women's Story Lab is going to move forward this fall! Stay tuned for updates.
Have a wonderful Independence Day. It's time to get free!
