As a part of The Gathering and alongside performances of The Chibok Girls: Our Story by Renegade Theatre, The Lab presented a suite of performances from around the world open with limited availability to the public.
Thursday, May 9th
6:15pm
MOVING STORIES
Documentary film Screening
Including Discussion with Battery Dance Company founder Jonathan Hollander
For 40 years, the Battery Dance company has been a force on the New York and international scenes. In hundreds of performances and workshops in American schools, they’ve not only moved audiences but changed thousands of young lives. Seeing dance as a universal language, founder Jonathan Hollander created Dancing to Connect, in which his dancers travel the globe to teach the tools of creativity to youth who have experienced war, poverty, sexual violence, extreme prejudice and severe trauma, enabling them to express their feelings and stories through dance.
Directed by Sundance award-winner Rob Fruchtman, Moving Stories follows six diverse dancers to India, Romania, Korea, and Iraq, documenting their process of teaching choreography and collaboration for performance within a week, while capturing the struggle, frustration, determination, and transformation of students and teachers alike.
MOVING STORIES is a film by Rob Fruchtman, Cornelia Ravenal, Mikael Södersten and Wendy Sax.
Thursday, May 9th
7:45pm
$#!THOLE COUNTRY CLAPBACK
Staged Reading
Written and Performed by Tony Award Nominee Pascale Armand
Directed by Patrice Johnson
A rebuttal to Donald Trump’s comment about allowing “people from shithole countries” entrance to the United States and a chronicle of the playwright’s family’s journey to American citizenship.
Thursday, May 9th
10:00pm
I PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE
Written and Performed by Velani Dibba, Cristina Ibarra, Benjamin Lillian, Aly Panjwani, and Devika Ranjan
An original Lab production written and performed by five Georgetown students and alumni that has been seen around the world, I Pledge Allegiance explores the convergence of ‘Americanness’ and immigrant identities of five young adults who grew up in a post-9/11 society. Created through personal interviews, social media testimony, and news headlines, this play interrogates notions of nationalism in the private and public spheres and what it means to be an American in the current political moment.
Friday, May 10th
7:00pm
HOW TO HAVE FUN IN A CIVIL WAR
Written and Performed by Ifrah Mansour
Directed by Lindsey Cacich
Minnesota-based Somali playwright and performer Ifrah Mansour revisits her childhood memories during the 1991 Somali civil war to confront violent history with humor, and provide a voice for the global refugee stories of children. How to Have Fun in a Civil War, is a one-act multimedia play, which explores war from an idyllic viewpoint of a seven-year-old Somali refugee girl.
Friday, May 10th
7:30pm
AN EVENING WITH AN IMMIGRANT
Written and Performed by Inua Ellams
Born to a Muslim father and a Christian mother in what is now considered by many to be Boko Haram territory, Inua Ellams left Nigeria for England in 1996 aged 12, moved to Ireland for three years, before returning to London and starting work as a writer and graphic designer. Littered with poems, stories and anecdotes, An Evening with an Immigrant” recounts Ellams’ ridiculous, fantastic, poignant immigrant-story of escaping fundamentalist Islam, experiencing prejudice and friendship in Dublin, performing solo at the National Theatre, and drinking wine with the Queen of England, all the while without a country to belong to or place to call home.
Friday, May 10th
9:15pm
Ashtar Theatre of Ramallah, Palestine
ORANGES AND STONES
Created and Performed by Iman Aoun and Edward Muallem
Two actors create a story without words (though with music and occasional sound), on a minimalist set of stones and oranges. She lives her life peacefully, writing a journal, tending to her garden then one day He arrives, tired and old, with a suitcase and a rolled-up document, signifying his ownership of her house. What follows is a power struggle which is both childish and terrible—it provokes us to laugh and recoil in equal measure.
Saturday, May 11th
12:45pm
LubDub Theatre Company
A PLAY FOR THE LIVING IN A TIME OF EXTINCTION
Written by Miranda Rose Hall
Staged Reading of a New work-in-progress
What has happened to the little brown bats? To the spotted tree frog? What will happen to Homo sapiens? A Play for the Living in a Time of Extinction is an evening of interactive, interspecies storytelling. This new work-in-progress asks—through story, song, and movement—how to be a human in an era of man-made extinction. This project is being developed by LubDub Theatre Company through an ongoing two-year residency with the Orchard Project’s NYC Greenhouse.
Saturday, May 11th
1:00pm
HOW TO HAVE FUN IN A CIVIL WAR
Written and Performed by Ifrah Mansour
Directed by Lindsey Cacich
Minnesota-based Somali playwright and performer Ifrah Mansour revisits her childhood memories during the 1991 Somali civil war to confront violent history with humor, and provide a voice for the global refugee stories of children. How to Have Fun in a Civil War, is a one-act multimedia play, which explores war from an idyllic viewpoint of a seven-year-old Somali refugee girl.
This performance will be followed by an excerpt from Imagination Stage’s Óyeme The Beautiful , Written by Miriam Gonzales. Directed by Elena Velasco
All performances subject to change.
Photo of Inua Ellams by Oliver Holms.
An Evening with an Immigrant is presented in partnership with the British Council, with support by the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice, and The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
