I aspire to forge performances that exemplify a divine marriage between experimental form and socially conscious content. I cannot bask in a privilege I'm not afforded to make experimental theater about nothing because the urgency confronting my brown body and my immigrant community is far from abstract. -JTT
I hold steadfast to a belief that artists can serve as the conscience of our times, and create work that speaks a people's truth in contrast to official lies. All we have is our memory against a celebrated and imposed amnesia, and as an artist, it's my job to remember. --JTT
José Torres-Tama is an Ecuadorian-born "Mestizo" of Quechua indigenous descent, and an interdisciplinary troublemaker. He is a published playwright and poet, journalist and photographer, renegade scholar and arts educator, visual and performance artist, and founder and Artistic Director of ArteFuturo Productions in New Orleans, the only producing entity of socially conscious Latin American theater events and performance art in the Crescent City.
In 2021, he was nominated for a prestigious Herb Alpert Award for the Arts in Theatre, and has been previously nominated for a United States Artists Fellowship.
He explores the effects of mass media on race relations; the underbelly of the “North American Dream” mythology; and the anti-immigrant hysteria currently gripping the United States of AMNESIA, which seduces you to embrace forgetting that the origin story of this so-called "beacon of democracy" is soaked in the blood of many others to propel its white supremacists beliefs.
Since 1995, he has toured his genre-bending shows nationally and internationally, and has performed at Roehampton University and Live Art Development in London; the Bluecoat Arts Centre in Liverpool; the Centre for Performance Research in Aberystwyth, Wales; and performance festivals in Canada, Mexico, Poland, and Slovenia.
In the academy, BROWN, CAL ARTS, Cornell, Duke, Ohio State University, University of Michigan, University of Maryland, UNC Chapel Hill, and many others have presented his politically provocative performances, interactive workshops, and "Live Art" multimedia lectures on performance as a catalyst for social change.
He is the recipient of a prestigious New York City MAP Fund Grant Award for his radical dinner theater on wheels called the Taco Truck Theater. The prime directive of this diverse ensemble project was that "Black Lives Matter" and "No Human Being Is Illegal."
Also, he has received a Regional Artist Project Award from the NEA for his genre-bending performances and a Louisiana Theater Fellowship. He has received three National Performance Network (NPN) Creation Funds (2010, 2013, 2019); two National Association of Latino Arts & Culture (NALAC) NFA Grants (2006 & 2016); and two New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) Development Grant Awards (2016 & 2021).
His current touring solo show, ALIENS, IMMIGRANTS & OTHER EVILDOERS, is a sci-fi Latino noir performance that exposes the hypocrisies of a system that dehumanizes immigrants while readily exploiting their labor, and was developed through a National Performance Network Creation Fund award.
ALIENS has sold-out a two hundred seat-theater at the RUTAS 2022 International Performance Festival in Toronto, Canada; and theaters in Houston, Minneapolis, New Orleans and at the Los Angeles Theater Center.
Performance Space 122 and Theater for the New City in New York, GALA Hispanic Theatre in DC, the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, Living Arts of Tulsa, the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans, and the Los Angeles Theater Center are among many arts organizations that have also presented his provocative performances.
From 2006 to 2011, he contributed commentaries to NPR’s Latino USA news journal on the many challenges of the reconstruction of New Orleans post-Hurricane Katrina.Diálogos Books New Orleans has published Immigrant Dreams & Alien Nightmares, a debut collection of twenty-five years of poems that have informed seven different solos.
Also, he is the recipient of a 2008 Joan Mitchell Foundation Award for the publication of his first art book by the Ogden Museum of Southern Art called New Orleans Free People of Color & Their Legacy, which documents his expressionistic pastel portraits of 18th and 19th century Creoles of color who fought to dismantle the institutional injustices of their times.
Hard Living in the Big Easy: Immigrants & Photography of Post-Katrina Protests is a book in the making that chronicles his ten-year photo documentation project of Latin American immigrant activists, and their public protests to expose the many human rights violations undocumented reconstruction workers experienced while rebuilding New Orleans.
Also, this book will anthologize his many Latino USA commentaries and writings documenting the wage theft and brutal deportations experienced by the same immigrant people that gave their blood, labor, and love to the rebirth of a flooded city.
Since 1992, he has written and performed twelve solo shows, including his internationally touring performance The Cone of Uncertainty: New Orleans after Katrina. He has directed ensemble community performances and student productions for CAL ARTS, Duke University, Georgia College State University, California State University Northridge, and Living Arts Tulsa, among many others.
In 2018, he was the artist-in-residence at GALA Hispanic Theatre in DC, and directed an intergenerational ensemble of undocumented day laborers, women workers, and a young poet called OUT OF THE SHADOWS / Afuera de la Sombra.
They performed a live art show to protest the proposed removal of the Temporary Protective Status (TPS) by the hater-in-chief and his cadre of criminals. Two guitarists from El Salvador provided the music, and the ensemble performed a bilingual public intervention in the Columbia Heights Plaza.
The ensemble also addressed the trauma that undocumented people experience, while living in the shadows of an empire that vilifies them and easily exploits their labor. Some one hundred and fifty people and immigrant families saw them in the open air down the block from GALA Hispanic Theatre's facility.
José Torres-Tama is an Ecuadorian-born "Mestizo" of Quechua indigenous descent, and an interdisciplinary troublemaker. He is a published playwright and poet, journalist and photographer, renegade scholar and arts educator, visual and performance artist, and founder and Artistic Director of ArteFuturo Productions in New Orleans, the only producing entity of socially conscious Latin American theater events and performance art in the Crescent City.
In 2021, he was nominated for a prestigious Herb Alpert Award for the Arts in Theatre, and has been previously nominated for a United States Artists Fellowship.
He explores the effects of mass media on race relations; the underbelly of the “North American Dream” mythology; and the anti-immigrant hysteria currently gripping the United States of AMNESIA, which seduces you to embrace forgetting that the origin story of this so-called "beacon of democracy" is soaked in the blood of many others to propel its white supremacists beliefs.
Since 1995, he has toured his genre-bending shows nationally and internationally, and has performed at Roehampton University and Live Art Development in London; the Bluecoat Arts Centre in Liverpool; the Centre for Performance Research in Aberystwyth, Wales; and performance festivals in Canada, Mexico, Poland, and Slovenia.
In the academy, BROWN, CAL ARTS, Cornell, Duke, Ohio State University, University of Michigan, University of Maryland, UNC Chapel Hill, and many others have presented his politically provocative performances, interactive workshops, and "Live Art" multimedia lectures on performance as a catalyst for social change.
He is the recipient of a prestigious New York City MAP Fund Grant Award for his radical dinner theater on wheels called the Taco Truck Theater. The prime directive of this diverse ensemble project was that "Black Lives Matter" and "No Human Being Is Illegal."
Also, he has received a Regional Artist Project Award from the NEA for his genre-bending performances and a Louisiana Theater Fellowship. He has received three National Performance Network (NPN) Creation Funds (2010, 2013, 2019); two National Association of Latino Arts & Culture (NALAC) NFA Grants (2006 & 2016); and two New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) Development Grant Awards (2016 & 2021).
His current touring solo show, ALIENS, IMMIGRANTS & OTHER EVILDOERS, is a sci-fi Latino noir performance that exposes the hypocrisies of a system that dehumanizes immigrants while readily exploiting their labor, and was developed through a National Performance Network Creation Fund award.
ALIENS has sold-out a two hundred seat-theater at the RUTAS 2022 International Performance Festival in Toronto, Canada; and theaters in Houston, Minneapolis, New Orleans and at the Los Angeles Theater Center.
Performance Space 122 and Theater for the New City in New York, GALA Hispanic Theatre in DC, the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, Living Arts of Tulsa, the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans, and the Los Angeles Theater Center are among many arts organizations that have also presented his provocative performances.
From 2006 to 2011, he contributed commentaries to NPR’s Latino USA news journal on the many challenges of the reconstruction of New Orleans post-Hurricane Katrina.Diálogos Books New Orleans has published Immigrant Dreams & Alien Nightmares, a debut collection of twenty-five years of poems that have informed seven different solos.
Also, he is the recipient of a 2008 Joan Mitchell Foundation Award for the publication of his first art book by the Ogden Museum of Southern Art called New Orleans Free People of Color & Their Legacy, which documents his expressionistic pastel portraits of 18th and 19th century Creoles of color who fought to dismantle the institutional injustices of their times.
Hard Living in the Big Easy: Immigrants & Photography of Post-Katrina Protests is a book in the making that chronicles his ten-year photo documentation project of Latin American immigrant activists, and their public protests to expose the many human rights violations undocumented reconstruction workers experienced while rebuilding New Orleans.
Also, this book will anthologize his many Latino USA commentaries and writings documenting the wage theft and brutal deportations experienced by the same immigrant people that gave their blood, labor, and love to the rebirth of a flooded city.
Since 1992, he has written and performed twelve solo shows, including his internationally touring performance The Cone of Uncertainty: New Orleans after Katrina. He has directed ensemble community performances and student productions for CAL ARTS, Duke University, Georgia College State University, California State University Northridge, and Living Arts Tulsa, among many others.
In 2018, he was the artist-in-residence at GALA Hispanic Theatre in DC, and directed an intergenerational ensemble of undocumented day laborers, women workers, and a young poet called OUT OF THE SHADOWS / Afuera de la Sombra.
They performed a live art show to protest the proposed removal of the Temporary Protective Status (TPS) by the hater-in-chief and his cadre of criminals. Two guitarists from El Salvador provided the music, and the ensemble performed a bilingual public intervention in the Columbia Heights Plaza.
The ensemble also addressed the trauma that undocumented people experience, while living in the shadows of an empire that vilifies them and easily exploits their labor. Some one hundred and fifty people and immigrant families saw them in the open air down the block from GALA Hispanic Theatre's facility.