ALIENS, IMMIGRANTS & OTHER EVILDOERS
Challenges the Anti-immigrant Hysteria
Gripping GrinGoLandia.
ALIENS is a
sci-fi Latino noir performance
that is visually dynamic,
profoundly moving, and hilariously absurd
ALIENS has sold-out shows in Houston, Minneapolis,
New Orleans, and the Los Angeles Theater Center.
ALIENS sold-out a two hundred seat theater
at the RUTAS 2022 International Performance Festival
in Toronto, Canada.
BROWN University
hosted two ALIENS performances.
What scholars say about ALIENS:
I was truly moved by your performance ... Your moving invocation of the reality of life
for so-called illegal immigrants from south of the border, does more, I think, than many learned
tomes and articles in the news media to illustrate the human nature of their continuing plight.
May your work grow from strength to strength! A Luta Continua!
--Professor Brian Meeks, Dept. Africana Studies
/ Rites & Reason Theatre
Brown University
José Torres-Tama's "Aliens, Immigrants & Other Evildoers"
hit me and my students right in the gut. One moment we were on the verge of tears,
the next, we were laughing uncontrollably. On a visceral level Torres-Tama's
work aims for the heart; on the cerebral level, it blows minds."
--Dr. William Stark, Dept. of Modern & Classical Languages
University of Rhode Island
ALIENS is informed by a docu-theater process of filmed interviews
the artist conducted over a ten-year period in the cities of
Houston, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Tulsa, and Washington DC,
Torres-Tama "documents" the lives of the "undocumented"
in an effort to humanize a people dehumanized for political gains
in a system that readily exploits their labor.
Challenges the Anti-immigrant Hysteria
Gripping GrinGoLandia.
ALIENS is a
sci-fi Latino noir performance
that is visually dynamic,
profoundly moving, and hilariously absurd
ALIENS has sold-out shows in Houston, Minneapolis,
New Orleans, and the Los Angeles Theater Center.
ALIENS sold-out a two hundred seat theater
at the RUTAS 2022 International Performance Festival
in Toronto, Canada.
BROWN University
hosted two ALIENS performances.
What scholars say about ALIENS:
I was truly moved by your performance ... Your moving invocation of the reality of life
for so-called illegal immigrants from south of the border, does more, I think, than many learned
tomes and articles in the news media to illustrate the human nature of their continuing plight.
May your work grow from strength to strength! A Luta Continua!
--Professor Brian Meeks, Dept. Africana Studies
/ Rites & Reason Theatre
Brown University
José Torres-Tama's "Aliens, Immigrants & Other Evildoers"
hit me and my students right in the gut. One moment we were on the verge of tears,
the next, we were laughing uncontrollably. On a visceral level Torres-Tama's
work aims for the heart; on the cerebral level, it blows minds."
--Dr. William Stark, Dept. of Modern & Classical Languages
University of Rhode Island
ALIENS is informed by a docu-theater process of filmed interviews
the artist conducted over a ten-year period in the cities of
Houston, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Tulsa, and Washington DC,
Torres-Tama "documents" the lives of the "undocumented"
in an effort to humanize a people dehumanized for political gains
in a system that readily exploits their labor.
In a visually stunning one-man performance using ritual as art, José Torres-Tama takes you on a painful journey from the sacred to the profane as he embodies the dozen most dramatic of the 100 stories he personally video recorded over a ten-year period as his magnus opus effort to “document the undocumented.”
---DC Theatre Arts
The performance is timely, intelligent, heart-wrenching, thought-provoking, and quite funny.
In Aliens, audiences are able to see a performance artist at the top of his game.
--- The Theatre Times (Houston)
In a scintillating, utterly absorbing seventy-five minutes, Mr. Torres-Tama dissects the current immigrant situation from a personal viewpoint that reaches back through American history to its earliest days and follows that thread to the present moment… José Torres-Tama is a performance artist of the highest caliber. -—Theatre Notes (Los Angeles)
ALIENS in Madison, WI
Fete de Marquette Shows July 13 & 14, 2024.
Other Recent Touring Projects
Morris Museum of Art April 4, 2024
University of Rhode Island September 2023
ALIENS at BROWN University
The Center for Latin American Studies,
the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice,
and the Africana Studies / Rites and Reason Theatre
in Providence, Rhode Island hosted
a one-week residency from Nov 13-18, 2022.
In collaboration, these BROWN University
entities presented two performances of
ALIENS, IMMIGRANTS & OTHER EVILDOERS
on Thursday & Friday, November 17 & 18, 2022.
ALUNA Theatre & RUTAS International Performing Arts Festival
in Toronto, Canada hosted three performances of
ALIENS, IMMIGRANTS & OTHER EVILDOERS
on Sept 29 and Oct 1 & 2, 2022.
Space One Eleven in Birmingham, AL,
presented ALIENS on October 2022,
as part of their Social Justice Festival during
Hispanic Heritage Month.
Supported by the National Performance Network.
The College of the Sequoias in Visalia, CA
presented the show, as part of a residency from Oct 25-27, 2022.
In New Orleans, Torres-Tama performed an excerpt of ALIENS
for the Association of American Studies Conference on Nov 3, 2022.
About ALIENS:
In 2019, the anti-immigrant hysteria reached brutal proportions with the mass killings at an El Paso Walmart, and award-winning performance artist, published playwright and poet,
José Torres-Tama takes on the haters in ALIENS, IMMIGRANTS & OTHER EVILDOERS.
He offers an inventive tour de force of heroic stories with heart, humanity, and humor that challenge the vilification of a people in search of the elusive "American Dream."
In the Latin American tradition, the artist bears a social responsibility to articulate the people’s struggle
--la lucha de le gente--when they are denied effective means to have their voices heard
against colonial oppression.
ALIENS is a creative response to a system that strategically attacks immigrants while exploiting our labor.
If artists do not challenge such systemic hypocrisies, then we abet the abuse of power with our silence.
--JTT
ALIENS, IMMIGRANTS & OTHER EVILDOERS
is an inventive Sci-Fi Latino Noir
performance solo that exposes the hypocrisies of a system
that vilifies the same people whose labor it readily exploits.
Satirizing the absurd status of immigrants as “extraterrestrials” through a sci-fi prism informed by comic film shorts inspired by Star Wars and The Matrix films, Torres-Tama deftly shape-shifts into a variety of “aliens,” who challenge a nation that has migrated to the “Dark Side."
He offers a clarion call for the United States of AMNESIA to remember
the words emblazoned on its iconic Statue of Liberty,
Give us your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
ALIENS also chronicles the rise in hate crimes against Latinx communities,
whether they are US citizens, permanent residents, or undocumented people.
The dehumanization of immigrants has spiraled into a societal norm, and all brown Latin Americans
are seen as suspect--akin to terrorists and demonized as political scapegoats.
ALIENS was developed by a docu-theater process of filmed interviews the artist conducted
with heroic people, who shared their epic border-crossing stories to escape economical
and political despair, and the profoundly moving performance has been
critically acclaimed for putting a human heart and face
on the persecuted immigrant.
The ALIENS collaborators that have contributed their genius skills are:
John Grimsley, sci-fi lighting design
Audio Dali, sci-fi sound-scapes
Bruce France, sci-fi film shorts
Claudia Copeland, classical vocalist
with a recording of a 13th century Ode
to the Black Madonna.
ALIENS was developed through a National Performance Network Creation Fund Award,
and co-commissioned by MECA in Houston, the Ashé Cultural Arts Center in New Orleans,
and GALA Hispanic Theatre in Washington, DC.