HOME/LAND examines the United States’ divided political climate around immigration, as well as the lived experiences of immigrants. Performers embody chanting protestors, immigration officers conducting interrogations, and refugees recounting real-life stories. This joyful and powerful theatrical performance is led by the Rude Mechanical Orchestra, and culminates in a dance, as images of New Yorkers and refugees are displayed on surrounding buildings and banners. By blurring the lines between demonstration and performance, opposition and support, refugee and citizen, HOME/LAND presents a face-to-face confrontation with the struggle for the right to live in a new home / land.
Marion Schoevaert (Director), Danny Bryck (Director), Young Cheong (Projection Director), Oscar Castillo (Photographer), Irina Patkanian (Documentary Film Director) Hussein Smko (Choreography), Rude Mechanical Orchestra (Music) Theresa Evangelista (Designer), Maclaine Lowery (PR), and Ali Andre Ali, Heather Holmes, Crystal Marie Stewart, Mari Vial-Golden, and Aaron Michael Zook. Based on “PAPERS” by Violaine Schwartz, translated by Christine Gutman (Fern Books).
Supported by NYSCA and FACE Contemporary Theater, a program of Villa Albertine and FACE Foundation, in partnership with the French Embassy in the United States, Washington Square Park Conservancy and PSC-CUNY Research Award Program.
ABOUT THE TEXT : Violaine Schwartz recorded testimonies of several asylum seekers, originally for a commission from the Besançon National Drama Centre. She met men and women, young and old, all united by the same destiny: the need to flee their homeland. She set herself a constraint: to write from the words spoken, and only from the words spoken. The resulting book, Papers, critically acclaimed in Le Monde and many other media, is a collage of recorded testimonies, cases from the immigration office, calligraphic poems, administrative officialisms and file numbers, the inner thoughts of immigration agents and volunteer hosts, and questions the author poses to us: Is the State the enemy of freedom? Is the Nation a new myth? To be happy, should we be indifferent to the rest of the world?
ABOUT PROJECTIONS : HOME/LAND features video portraits of refugees from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, filmed by Irina Patkanian in different refugee camps in Greece and Lebanon, and portraits of New Yorkers by photographer Oscar Castillo. Guerrilla projection mapping, pioneered by artists, has been increasingly embraced by activists as a medium for delivering political messages. With a single high-powered projector, the side of a building can be transformed to a canvas for the cause: visually powerful, but without leaving a trace.