Community Ensemble Projects
Employing Performance to Explore Trauma
Cultivating Young Voices & Empowering Marginalized Communities
As an educator of experimental theater, visual arts, and writing for the stage, I've been dedicated to directing community
performances to empower marginalized Black and Brown teens, adult men resurrecting their lives post-incarceration,
and Latinx college students facing the Immigration Crisis and rise in hate crimes against their communities. --JTT
Employing Performance to Explore Trauma
Cultivating Young Voices & Empowering Marginalized Communities
As an educator of experimental theater, visual arts, and writing for the stage, I've been dedicated to directing community
performances to empower marginalized Black and Brown teens, adult men resurrecting their lives post-incarceration,
and Latinx college students facing the Immigration Crisis and rise in hate crimes against their communities. --JTT
Since 1995, José Torres-Tama has directed Community Ensemble projects that employ performance art as a creative tool for self-empowerment with marginalized black and brown teens; homeless youth dealing with physical & psychological abuse; African American and Latino adult men resurrecting their lives post-incarceration and crack addiction; diverse college students exploring the Immigration Crisis and the rise in hate crimes against their Latinx communities; and multi-generational community members daring to explore the Apartheid America and racially charged cities they inhabit.
Since 2002, he has worked with undocumented teens exploring the trauma of life in the shadows. Also, these are bilingual workshops offered in Spanish and English, and available for high school students.
The student or community participants are guided through the process of creating an original ensemble performance piece based on their personal stories, spoken word poems, and collective vignettes. The artist employs the "story circle process" as a means of developing common ground and discover the universal truths of our diverse human lives.
Through an immersive workshop process, the artist introduces performance art as a creative tool to unleash trauma for healing through collective live art rituals informed by corporal commitment, improvised personal stories, identifying mythic archetypes, and developing a nurturing space that honors the individual story as part of the greater human collective.
Offering an inspiring introduction to developing community ensemble performances, he guides and cultivates the physical, conceptual, and actual voices of the participants--from teens, to college students, to adult men trying to repair their lives post-incarceration.
He engages in ensemble building through collaborative trust and the participants' willingness to consider Federico Garcia Lorca’s ideas of “duende” possession when delivering work that transforms all engaged participants into avatars of difficult truths.
The one-week or two-week residency culminates in the ensemble performance of an hour-long original work written and performed by the participating youth or community members, and the piece can be presented at the hosting site, a community center, theater space, or as a public intervention on the streets.
YOUTH PERFORMANCE PROJECTS: 1995 - Present
Torres-Tama has developed Youth Performance Projects with Duke University working with Latinx undocumented teens and African American youth in partnership with the YMCA in Durham, NC; the Ogden Museum for their Artists & Sense of Place educational visual arts programs to work with African American youth to explore the history of Free People of Color in New Orleans, LA; MECA in partnership with the Covenant House to work with homeless teens in Houston, TX; PUENTES New Orleans to work with Latinx and African American teens to explore their search for the American Dream; and Teatro Galeria Manny Maldonado to work with teens of color facing the AIDS Crisis in their community in Brooklyn, NY.
Other teen projects have been developed at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque; NM; Centro Hispano in Madison, WI; Out North Contemporary Art House in Anchorage, AK; Tigertail Productions in Miami, FL; the Walker’s Point Center for the Arts in Milwaukee, WI; Center for Cultural Exchange in Portland, ME: and the New Orleans Recreational Department.
These projects have been developed with funding support from the National Performance Network, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation, and the Philip Morris Foundation.
COMMUNITY EMPOWERMENT PROJECTS at Art Centers Galleries, and Universities: 2003 to the Present
Torres-Tama has directed community performance projects to empower diverse adult voices at the Ashé Cultural Arts Center in partnership with Living Witness to work with African American and Latino men post-incarceration in New Orleans, LA; California State University Northridge (CSUN) in partnership with the Chicana/no Studies Dept. and Latinx students to explore the rise in hate crimes against their fellow students and immigrant community; California Institute of the Arts (CAL Arts) to work with diverse students on the anti-immigrant hysteria gripping the country in Valencia, CA; Georgia State College & University (GCSU) to explore the Immigration Crisis with undocumented and diverse students in Milledgeville, GA; Living Arts of Tulsa to explore the mythology of the American Dream with diverse artists and poets in Tulsa, OK; the Ashé Cultural Arts Center to explore the Bush-era war in Iraq and Apartheid America with a multi-generational cast of artists, poets, and performers in New Orleans, LA; the Baton Rouge Gallery with a diverse cast of poets to explore the local racial divide in the Deep South capital city of Baton Rouge, LA; and Alternate ROOTS to explore the racial divide with a multi-generational cast of artist from teens to elders in Atlanta, GA.
These projects have been funded with support grants from the Louisiana Division of the Arts, the New Orleans Arts Council, the NEA, the Phillip Morris Foundation, and the National Performance Network.
Washington, DC: Public Intervention / Performance as Public Protest
GALA Hispanic Theatre
Out of the Shadows / Afuera de la Sombra:
Immigrant Voices Empowerment Project
Research Residencies in April 14-21
Community Workshops Residency July 5-13
Performance July 14, 2018
José Torres-Tama was GALA Hispanic Theatre's 2018 artist-in-residence, and he was engaged to develop a "day laborers theater project" with multiple residency visits. GALA presented a creative response to the removal of the Temporary Protective Status by developing a community theater project directed by Torres-Tama, and it gave voice to the stories of immigrant youth, day laborers, and immigrant women workers.
Through immersive theater workshops, the artist engaged the immigrant participants in creating a new ensemble work that they themselves performed to explore their lives as undocumented people--suffering in the shadows of an empire that has made them "enemies of the state."
They performed on the streets of the empire's capital in a public intervention to an audience of 150 people in attendance, and Latin American families that would not otherwise make it inside a theater experienced this moving ensemble performance of empowered community voices.
The ephemeral ensemble emerged "Out of the Shadows / Afuera de la sombra" to perform their heroic stories of resistance and perseverance in the Civic Square Plaza of Columbia Heights in DC.
They performed to a diverse community of immigrant families and their allies in a moving work that transformed performance into collective public protest of immigrant voices.