By now, most of you are probably aware that I escaped the social chaos that engulfed New Orleans in Katrina’s wake on a pirated school bus. In fact, I was on the same bus that delivered Allen Toussaint, a treasured son and musical genius of the Crescent City, out of the madness on Wednesday night after the storm. Since then, I have written numerous cyber essays about the post-Katrina mess that New Orleans is still in, as we approach the ominous anniversary.

I am in the process of putting together a collection of these essays for a book called “New Orleans in Exile: Hard Living in the Post-Katrina Big Easy.” This fall I also begin touring a new performance that was created from my personal experiences of seeing civility fold like a fragile house of cards in Katrina’s winds and water.

“The Cone of Uncertainty: New Orleans after Katrina” will be presented for two shows as part of an artist-in-residency program at The Ohio State University in Columbus, OH. My visit is hosted by the Department of Theatre, and the residency includes a public lecture called “Performance Art as a Tool for Social Change,” and a workshop for MFA Theater students called “Exploring the Personal to Comment on the Political in Performance.” The residency dates are from September 27 - 30, 2006.

“The Cone of Uncertainty” will be presented for two shows on Friday and Saturday, September 29 & 30 at 7:30pm in the Roy Bowen Theatre. I welcome any of you who have expressed interest in this new work to attend these performances and have an opportunity to experience this live art show.

If you cannot attend and are interested in receiving more information on the Katrina solo and residency activities, please contact me, and I can provide some more information. I encourage you to consider this performance as part of your future presentations, for it offers a unique perspective from an artist who directly witnessed the apocalyptic abandonment of New Orleans. Above all, this performance is born out of a sense of personal urgency and a mission to not let New Orleans be forgotten, as in the days after the storm. A year later, the city remains 70% destroyed, and the issues of “race and class” and “media propaganda and crisis” that surfaced in the unfolding of this tragedy are universal concerns, which affect all of our communities across the country.

The show will also travel in October to Northampton Community College in Bethlehem, PA for two performances on October 12 & 13. Other residencies are being developed with universities in California and presenters in Washington D.C., and Houston, TX.

Thank you for your support.

Jose Torres Tama & ArteFuturo Productions
2453 Dauphine Street &
New Orleans, LA 70117
504.232.2968
www.torrestama.com

*********

Columbus, OH: The Theater Department at The Ohio State University Artist-in-residency from September 27 – 30, 2006

September 28: “Performance Art as a Tool For Social Change”
This multi-media performed analysis explores the role of the performance artist as a social provocateur, and the development of performance practices as creative strategies to initiate dialog concerning issues of race, gender, war, homelessness, and the AIDS crisis.
The audience is encouraged to participate in a discussion of art that crosses into the territory of the social and its effectiveness as a tool for change.

Sept. 29 - 30 Roy Bowen Theatre:
“The Cone of Uncertainty: New Orleans after Katrina”
Written, Performed, and Conceptualized by José Torres Tama

José has lived in New Orleans for the past 22 years, and he managed to escape the social chaos that submerged the “Crescent City” after Hurricane Katrina on a stolen school bus, which was operating a rescue mission of Creole families. In his latest solo, he tells his survival story and explores the criminal negligence of federal officials, as people were made to beg for help and water in front of national TV cameras. Through an inventive fusion of spoken word, storm footage projections, movement and rituals, and a variety of voices and characters he inhabits deftly, Torres Tama offers a performance that is politically provocative, visually engaging, and profoundly moving.

“The Cone of Uncertainty” debuted at the renowned Highways Performance Space in Los Angeles last November with the support of residency funds from the National Performance Network. Highways’ Director Leo Garcia invited José to transform his cyber essays into a new work created through the center’s support.

Sept. 30: “Exploring the Personal to Comment on the Political in Performance Art”
Through this interactive workshop, the artist investigates the usage of autobiographical material as subject matter to explore larger issues concerning race, religion, gender, and politics within performance art. The personal story is discussed as an imprint of a particular experience in time with universal and political resonance. The students are led through a series of improvised text and conceptual movement exercises designed to inspire the revealing of the secret self. The artist offers a safe and nurturing space for the sharing of such personal experiences.

-------------

Dear national arts communities:

New Orleans remains in the “cone of uncertainty” and the future of this genuine American city that is almost 300 years old seems to be in the hands of a government that abandoned us in the first days after Katrina’s flood waters marked us forever. Hopefully, we will make more levees and not war in the near future and this administration will endeavor in more rebuilding than destruction. As an artist dedicated to this city, I have returned to endeavor in doing what I know best—organizing my community of artists to proclaim our presence and to transform my personal experiences into art.

“The Cone of Uncertainty: New Orleans After Katrina” is the new piece that I have developed with the generous support of Highways Performance Space in Los Angeles and the invitation by its executive director Leo Garcia to transform my early essays on Katrina’s aftermath into a live art piece.

The work is a multi-disciplinary performance and installation informed by projections of footage by Afro-Cuban filmmaker William Sabourin O’Reilly who began documenting Katrina’s passing at 5:30am Monday morning until his escape the Thursday after. In addition, the work employs personal stories, visual tableau and rituals of fire and water to explore the social storm that precipitated after the natural storm while addressing the necessity to maintain one’s sense of humanity in the struggle for survival.

It is a visually dynamic performance that engages you emotionally as well. “The Cone” will be moving into further development as a commissioned work with the support of Jump-Start Performance in San Antonio, TX, a progressive company that supports performance and experimental theatre of national and international artists.

The residency activities will engage displaced peoples in a series of workshops designed to use performance art as strategy for community healing. If the residency time allows, we would create an original ensemble performance piece with the workshop participants that explores physical and spiritual displacement, crisis and trauma and reinvention of “the self” in the face of such a tragedy.

We have additional interest from a variety of organizations that include the Theater Department at Ohio State University and Teatro Bilingue in Houston. If you have any interest in this project, please contact me at 504-232-2968 or via e-mail at poetafuego@juno.com and/or jose@torrestama.com.

This project is being developed with the production support of Sarah Jane Johnson who recently stage-managed the presentations at Highways in Los Angeles. Ms. Johnson is currently in New York working on her own one-woman show at a new theater space as part of a double bill with another artist. Below is the information. If you are in the Manhattan area, please drop by and support the work of this talented young artist who recently received her Masters in Fine Art and Theater from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

Ashe, gracias and thank you,

Jose Torres Tama
504-232-2968
www.torrestama.com


DEVIL IN A BOX and WARNING SIGNS

Come see two brand spanking new solo shows next Friday and Saturday at the equally brand spanking new 7th Street Small Stage!

December 16th and 17th
8:00 PM
43 E 7th Street between 2nd Avenue and Cooper Square Tickets are $10 Email reservations to jordanfyoung@gmail.com

DEVIL IN A BOX by Sarah Jane Johnson
Sarah Jane Johnson's latest solo piece is a collage of dance, conceptual movement, and heightened poetry that embraces the art of personal story. The show focuses on a woman whose journey into adulthood is ambushed by the horrors of rape in a foreign country and the extraordinary loss of self. From visiting rapists in Angola prison to traveling thousands of miles to prosecute; one fiery red head is strengthened by the ability to share her words while using humor to heal in this passionately honest performance.

WARNING SIGNS by Maggie Surovell
An original, humorous, coming-of-age story about a Jewish/Socialist/ Vegetarian/Feminist named Maggie. Growing up in a radically liberal household wasn't always easy for Maggie, but it did help prepare her for dealing with the reality of racism, religion, vegetarian haters, sexism, and of course her extremely big hair.
Having a politically left-wing father and feminist mother forced Maggie to choose between fitting-in with her friends or standing up for what she believed in. Throughout the piece Maggie makes surprising discoveries that will both shock and delight audiences. WARNING SIGNS will feature a guest appearance by G.W Bush December 16th and 17th 8:00 PM
43 E 7th Street between 2nd Avenue and Cooper Square Tickets are $10 Email reservations to jordanfyoung@gmail.com

 

Dear national arts communities,

I am writing from the road again in Madison, Wisconsin developing a four-day youth residency project with the Overture Center for the Arts and engaging with Latino teens in the area through a series of workshops and performances in local High Schools. Below are the details as my tour continuous from here to Los Angeles for the debut of a new solo called “the Cone of Uncertainty: New Orleans after Katrina,” but I spent the past Halloween weekend n New Orleans shortly after I left Ann Arbor finishing the project at the University of Michigan. Halloween weekend was the perfect backdrop for my second return to the city since I evacuated. The Marigny neighborhood and the French Quarter seemed back to normal with costumed locals reclaiming the small portion of the city that is inhabitable with second lines and public rituals of music and dance, but at the same time the eerie feeling of unknowing was everywhere and plenty of stories were about the mass number of evictions the subculture, artists and people of color are facing.

In addition, the exploitation of Latino immigrant labor is unimaginable more than inhumane, and we need to mount a collective scream of outrage against these practices. In both of my returns to the city, I have met which Latino workers in bars telling me of horrific stories of being cheated by contactors who promise money and pay them nothing. I encountered one Puerto Rican. Read America citizen, who told me that after two weeks of labor for twelve hours at a time, he was told that he would not be paid and if he wanted to mount any dispute to go to Birmingham, Alabama. The company name he game was called “Live Short,” but he had no other information. When informed about this situation by these employers, he and others how were in the same labor force for the past two weeks were escorted out of their hotel rooms, where they had been housed, but none other than the rogue New Orleans Police Department. These are your tax dollars ate work people and no one seems to be addressing this issues in the newspapers there because it simply is not “sexy” to report on the abuse of the Latino labor force working under the most abhorrent conditions in New Orleans. It is the wild, wild West and the days of feudal lords.

New Orleans has digressed into an 18th Century feudal madhouse where labor and life are not valued specially if you are a Latino and an immigrant. I hope that it becomes clear to all of you why they, the construction companies and Haliburton subcontractors reaping wealthy no-bid awards, have not brought back the displaced African American community to be a labor force. What kind of national and local outrage would they have to face if they exploited the evacuated black labor force with such abusive practices that the Latino laborers are experiencing right now? It is quite obvious that my Latino people, mi raza cosmica, my brown people working endless hours under unbearable conditions to repair my beloved broken city are the "chosen ones" to absorb this exploitation silently without the outcries or support of labor organizations. I beg of you to assist us in fighting these abuses. Not surprisingly, my Latino people have been demonized as well for taking these jobs that no one, black, white or Asian would certainly take under these conditions. All the ingredients are in place to criminalize my culture while we bear the mistreatments of capitalist employers abusing our bodes, our dignity, our labor and our souls. Bienvenidos a los Estados Unidos. Welcome, my friends, to new millennium America

Our own Mayor Nagin has expressed to cheering groups of gringo business men how “its good to have some Mexicans” in town, but to not worry that they will overtake the city. Do not be fooled by his complexion because Nagin is a perfect black puppet of the white business mongers. I only hope that he is enjoying their long reaching arms and fist maneuvering his mouth through his backside. I hope that is not too harsh an image or description, but honestly we are being played. I have said it before and I will say it again, this is not a time for holding our tongues. We need to yell loudly about these practices when we could use a little more humanity in this state of emergency. I do not expect such humanity from work contractors and the business owners of New Orleans who are reshaping the city at will. As if all of this was enough to contend with below is another account of my experiences and the evictions that artists and residents of color are facing as well.

Please feel free to distribute this to your cyber communities freely.

Ashe---Jose Torres Tama

New Orleans: Evicted during Halloween
I was in New Orleans for the weekend, and being back in my beloved city precipitates euphoria and an infinite sadness. The euphoria comes from reconnecting with friends and community and returning “home,” the physical home, the spiritual home and the social home, but the unending sadness easily overwhelms that euphoria as the perverse and unfettered capitalistic fangs of landlords are showing themselves in all their sadistic and greedy fervor during this Halloween weekend. Not the costumed witches or ghosts that normally haunt the city are casing alarm, but the newly-fanged landlords who are now allowed to suck the blood of our people dry for the mere gain of more dollars with escalated rental properties and evictions that will facilitate their unfettered greed.

We are being evicted from our physical homes, and our spiritual homes and these inhumane landlords are exacting an ethnic and cultural cleansing. I was served an eviction letter by my opportunistic landlord who had begun to demand rent for October when my Fabourg Marigny neighborhood was still uninhabitable with not electricity and gas—even when our zip code had not made the list of zip codes welcomed back into the city by Mayor Nagin, whose indifference silence concerning these practices makes him complicit in these atrocities.

The naturals storm called Katrina has long passed, but the social storm continuous and we need your help on a national level to bring attention to these evictions and cultural cleansing that is happening right now. Today, another artist friend is facing eviction and is in the process of moving out. Other landlords are just throwing their tenants belongings out into the street. There are horrors like this everyday, and while I was back there for just two days, heard at least ten specific stories of rent gouging and eviction notices at an alarming rate to further displace people and dispossess us even when we have been dispossessed of our spiritual and physical homes for the past two months.

CNN is not reporting this, and certainly Cooper Anderson is not interviewing the many artists and residents who are coming back to evictions, The Times-Picayune had an article on these evictions last week with interviews of landlords and their perspectives—making themselves sound as if they have no other choice but to evict their tenants and throw their belongings out on the street because they have not heard from them. You can probably find the article on the www.nola.com archives and see read that not one tenant had been interviewed to present their perspective. The Times-Picayune’s choice to present only the landlords’ views does not surprise me. They are not touching the tough story of ethnic and cultural cleansing and rent gouging that these evictions are all about. That the Times-Picayune would be on the side of real-estate and property owners comes as no surprise, for they have always been a conservative newspaper.

And for the most part (100% really), the Marigny landlords in my neighborhood where countless evictions are taking place are from the dominant culture whose skin pigment can be described as very white and fare and of European descent, and many have expressed joy at having the “urban element” not return to “their” neighborhood. I am a man of color, a Latino of indigenous descent, and I have been very active in my community in speaking out against the gentrification that before Katrina had already displaced much of the African American working class in that community over the past five years. They are more than happy to try to have my kind evacuated once more and accelerate this process now.

In addition, they have the complete support of councilwoman Jacquelyn Clarkson, who interestingly enough in an overt conflict of interest, runs and a real-estate company of her won with offices at the World Trade Center at the foot of Canal Street,. Ms. Clarkson has never been a friend of subculture and she was instrumental in trying to eradicate the street performers and brass bands from performing in the Quarter during the early 90’s. Not long ago, she waged a battle against the homeless, and she delights in using her council power to wage war against opponents she feels she can defeat—the bohemian culture of artists and working class people of color. She is always on the side of real estate and property. Look up her record and let it speak for itself. She and the property owners are exacting a cultural and ethnic cleansing. This is not an exaggeration and New Orleans still remains lawless in the hands such piranhas of real estate and we, the artists and residents of color, are their new juicy victims. But we will not let ourselves be victimized by their greed, and we will expose them for the inhumanity they are exhibiting in a time where great compassion is needed.

I am starting a web site called www.FAALNO.com, which stands for Fraudulent And Abusive Landlords New Orleans. We should have it up and running within the next few days and we aim to post listing of all incidents concerning these evictions. We aim to fight back with class action suits already in progress and to expose them locally, nationally and internationally for the insidious capitalists practices that they are exacting in a state of emergency.

Jose Torres Tama
www.torrestama.com


ON TOUR:
After an intense evacuation from New Orleans in a pirated school bus to escape the social chaos in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Jose Torres Tama is on the move again with multidisciplinary projects that explore the immigrant experience, the American Dream mythology and the effects of media on our lives. Adding to this, the artist will debut a new solo called “The Cone of Uncertainty: New Orleans after Katrina” at the acclaimed Highways Performance Space in Los Angeles, CA.

Combining bilingual text, personal stories, movement and rituals of fire and water, he recounts the sense of abandonment that grew with each day after the storm and the social order that began to fold like a house of cards in the wake of Katrina’s category five pounding of New Orleans. In the process, he speaks of a universal challenge under such conditions in which one’s reptilian instinct for personal survival had to be balanced by maintaining a sense of humanity and to act in the service of others who were less fortunate.

His solo shows are hybrid performance art spectacles--informed by bilingual texts, spoken word, visual tableaus, movement and rituals of fire. Catch him at these various projects across the country. His “Youth Performance Projects” cultivate the young voices of African American & Latino teens through a creative forum that engages the teens in cross-cultural collaboration and self-empowerment to speak and perform their personal stories.

Upcoming Residency & Performance Projects Fall 2005

Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Artist in Residence Oct. 21-28
Performing “Between the Pen & the Sword” & Student Workshops
Academic Lecture “Performance Art as a Tool for Social Change”

Madison, WI: The Overture Center for the Arts Nov. 1-4
Three-day “Youth Residency” and Performances

Los Angeles, CA: Highways Performance Space Nov. 7-14
National Performance Network Residency
Debut of New Solo “The Cone of Uncertainty: New Orleans after Katrina”
Four Shows November 10-13

Visit www.torrestama for more information and details on thee upcoming events.


Brief Bio: Based in New Orleans and working in that arts community for twenty years, Jose Torres Tama has toured the U.S and internationally to Eastern Europe and Mexico for the past decade. Cornell, Duke, Rutgers, LSU and the University of Michigan are some of the many institutions that have presented his solo performances, youth residencies and academic lectures on performance art as a tool for social change.
The recipient of a Louisiana Theater Fellowship and an award from the NEA, he often explores the effects of media on identity and race relations, the “American Dream” mythology and the Latino immigrant experience. His work with marginalized Latino and African American teens that employs performance art as a creative strategy to cultivate the voices of the unheard has been profiled on NPR and has received much praise as an empowering example of how art can transform lives. www.torrestama.com

 

I am writing from Ann Arbor where I have been at the University of Michigan engaged in an artist-in-residence project. I have been conducting performance art workshops with students here, and I will be performing my solo piece ‘Between the Pen and the Sword" tonight at the Lydia Mendelson Theatre. The program begins at 7pm with students performing the works that they have created through the performance workshops, and I follow with my solo.

The show is free and open to the public and has been sponsored by multiple departments including Latina/o Studies, The Program in American Culture, The Center for World Performance Studies and the Drama and Theatre Department. My residency here is in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, as part of it, we will also debut a film by New Orleans William Saborin O’Reilly, an Afro-Cuban film maker, who documented his stay after Katrina and his eventual escape in a 42 minute work-in-progress entitled "Old Orleans." William is a good friend of mine and he recently sent me the DVD version of this film. I am trying to create venue possibilities for its viewing in conjunction with my current tour across the country.

This film will be shown in conjunction with a lecture I present on Thursday called ‘Performance Art as a Tool for Social Change," where we will engage in a dialogue on the tragedy of New Orleans after Katrina and the importance of artists presenting their perspectives. Below is the narrative of my solo show and the information on the tour that continues from here to Madison, Wisconsin and ends in Los Angeles will the debut of a new performance that I am creating called "the Cone of Uncertainty: New Orleans after Katrina."

Gracias,

Jose Torres Tama
www.torrestama.com
poetafuego@juno.com or jose@torrestama.com
504-232-2968

"BETWEEN THE PEN & THE SWORD" is Jose Torres Tama’s latest solo performance that combines personal stories, bilingual prose, incantations, movement, and rituals of fire to explore the Latino immigrant experience and the search for the "American Dream" as a mythic journey of rites-of-passage in urban culture.
While his point of departure is the mythology of the personal journey, Torres Tama touches upon such universal themes as the struggle between good and evil, the spiritual search in a consumer culture, racial conflict in a segregated society and whether to wage one’s battle with the pen or the sword. Delivering his work with the intensity of an urban warrior, he moves rapidly from poetic drama to the hilariously absurd--continuously breaking the wall between performer and audience.

TOUR INFO:
After an intense evacuation from New Orleans in a pirated school bus to escape the social chaos in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Jose Torres Tama is on the move again with multidisciplinary projects that explore the immigrant experience, the American Dream mythology and the effects of media on our lives.
Adding to this, the artist will debut a new solo called "The Cone of
Uncertainty: New Orleans after Katrina" at the acclaimed Highways Performance Space in Los Angeles, CA.
Combining bilingual text, personal stories, movement and rituals of fire and water, he recounts the sense of abandonment that grew with each day after the storm and the social order that began to fold like a house of cards in the wake of Katrina’s category five pounding of New Orleans. In the process, he speaks of a universal challenge under such conditions in which one’s reptilian instinct for personal survival had to be balanced by maintaining a sense of humanity and to act in the service of others who were less fortunate.
His solo shows are hybrid performance art spectacles--informed by bilingual texts, spoken word, visual tableaus, movement and rituals of fire. Catch him at these various projects across the country. His "Youth Performance Projects"
cultivate the young voices of African American & Latino teens through a creative forum that engages the teens in cross-cultural collaboration and self-empowerment to speak and perform their personal stories.
Upcoming Residency & Performance Projects Fall 2005 Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Artist in Residence Oct. 21-28 Performing "Between the Pen & the Sword" & Student Workshops Academic Lecture "Performance Art as a Tool for Social Change"
Madison, WI: The Overture Center for the Arts Nov. 1-4 Three-day "Youth Residency" and Performances Los Angeles, CA: Highways Performance Space Nov. 7-14 National Performance Network Residency Debut of New Solo "The Cone of Uncertainty: New Orleans after Katrina"
Four Shows November 10-13
Visit www.torrestama for more information and details on thee upcoming events.

Brief Bio: Based in New Orleans and working in that arts community for twenty years, Jose Torres Tama has toured the U.S and internationally to Eastern Europe and Mexico for the past decade. Cornell, Duke, Rutgers, LSU and the University of Michigan are some of the many institutions that have presented his solo performances, youth residencies and academic lectures on performance art as a tool for social change. The recipient of a Louisiana Theater Fellowship and an award from the NEA, he often explores the effects of media on identity and race relations, the "American Dream" mythology and the Latino immigrant experience. His work with marginalized Latino and African American teens that employs performance art as a creative strategy to cultivate the voices of the unheard has been profiled on NPR and has received much praise as an empowering example of how art can transform lives. www.torrestama.com