ALIENS, IMMIGRANTS & OTHER EVILDOERS
a sci-fi Latino noir genre-bending performance that is visually dynamic,
profoundly moving, hilariously absurd, and challenges the anti-immigrant hysteria
gripping the United States of AMNESIA
ALIENS has sold-out a two hundred-seat theater at Vanderbilt University,
and theaters in Houston, Minneapolis, New Orleans, and Los Angeles.
a sci-fi Latino noir genre-bending performance that is visually dynamic,
profoundly moving, hilariously absurd, and challenges the anti-immigrant hysteria
gripping the United States of AMNESIA
ALIENS has sold-out a two hundred-seat theater at Vanderbilt University,
and theaters in Houston, Minneapolis, New Orleans, and Los Angeles.
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. Aliens is a necessary theatre that sparks conversations about the hardships faced by the undocumented community and asks audiences to consider what we might do to address these inadequacies.
--- The Theatre Times
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… It is a revelation of historical fact, and an accounting of the current political situation, all delivered with highly entertaining vigor. José Torres-Tama is a performance artist of the highest caliber. -—LA Theatre News
During the height of the pandemic lock-down, a tsunami of cancellations followed with numerous ALIENS, IMMIGRANTS & OTHER EVILDOERS national and international performances gone with the Covid winds, but for the first time in two years, I am on the road again. The RUTAS International Performing Arts Festival is hosting three shows of ALIENS from Sept 29 and Oct 1-2, 2022.
As such, I am trying to rise from the Covid ashes! Space One Eleven in Birmingham, AL, present ALIENS (Oct 15), as part of their Social Justice Festival and for Hispanic Heritage Month, Later in October, the College of the Sequoias in Visalia, CA presents the show, as part of a residency from Oct 25-27.
In New Orleans, Torres-Tama performs an excerpt of ALIENS for the Association of American Studies Conference on Nov 3. Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island is developing a performance residency of ALIENS from Nov 13-18. Performance dates (TBA), and more information to come.
About ALIENS:
With the anti-immigrant hysteria reaching brutal proportions and the 2019 killings in El Paso, award-winning performance artist, published poet and playwright José Torres-Tama takes on the haters in ALIENS, IMMIGRANTS & OTHER EVILDOERS, and 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 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”, and 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.
Also, ALIENS chronicles the rise in hate crimes against Latinas/nos, whether they are US citizens, permanent residents, or undocumented people. The dehumanization of immigrants has spiraled into a societal norm where all brown Latinos are seen as suspect--akin to terrorists and demonized as political scapegoats. 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, the profoundly moving performance has been critically acclaimed for putting a human heart and face on the persecuted immigrant.
ALIENS’ collaborators include John Grimsley, sci-fi lighting design; Billy Atwell, sci-fi sound-scapes; Bruce France, sci-fi film shorts; and Classical Vocalist Claudia Copeland with a recording of a 13th century Ode to the Black Madonna.
ALIENS was developed through a National Performance Network Creation Fund Award from the NPN, and co-commissioned by the Ashé Cultural Arts Center in New Orleans, MECA in Houston, and GALA Hispanic Theatre in Washington, DC.
What Critics Say about ALIENS:
Torres-Tama brings his take on immigration to the Guadalupe. ---San Antonio Express
Powerful performance art piece lets audience feel mistreatment of Hispanic immigrants... Torres-Tama's moving and visually stimulating piece holds a mirror--both literally and figuratively--up to the audience. ---Times-Picayune (New Orleans)
An adroit performer and lucid writer, José Torres-Tama bravely takes us to the dark side where most dare not to go. ---DC Theatre Scene
The multi-media “Aliens,” while at times laugh-out-loud funny, provocatively explores the history of immigration then and now in the United States … is an eye-opener, and perhaps a mind-opener and heart-opener. ---Bethlehem Press
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. Aliens is a necessary theatre that sparks conversations about the hardships faced by the undocumented community and asks audiences to consider what we might do to address these inadequacies.
--- The Theatre Times
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… It is a revelation of historical fact, and an accounting of the current political situation, all delivered with highly entertaining vigor. José Torres-Tama is a performance artist of the highest caliber. -—LA Theatre News
During the height of the pandemic lock-down, a tsunami of cancellations followed with numerous ALIENS, IMMIGRANTS & OTHER EVILDOERS national and international performances gone with the Covid winds, but for the first time in two years, I am on the road again. The RUTAS International Performing Arts Festival is hosting three shows of ALIENS from Sept 29 and Oct 1-2, 2022.
As such, I am trying to rise from the Covid ashes! Space One Eleven in Birmingham, AL, present ALIENS (Oct 15), as part of their Social Justice Festival and for Hispanic Heritage Month, Later in October, the College of the Sequoias in Visalia, CA presents the show, as part of a residency from Oct 25-27.
In New Orleans, Torres-Tama performs an excerpt of ALIENS for the Association of American Studies Conference on Nov 3. Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island is developing a performance residency of ALIENS from Nov 13-18. Performance dates (TBA), and more information to come.
About ALIENS:
With the anti-immigrant hysteria reaching brutal proportions and the 2019 killings in El Paso, award-winning performance artist, published poet and playwright José Torres-Tama takes on the haters in ALIENS, IMMIGRANTS & OTHER EVILDOERS, and 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 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”, and 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.
Also, ALIENS chronicles the rise in hate crimes against Latinas/nos, whether they are US citizens, permanent residents, or undocumented people. The dehumanization of immigrants has spiraled into a societal norm where all brown Latinos are seen as suspect--akin to terrorists and demonized as political scapegoats. 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, the profoundly moving performance has been critically acclaimed for putting a human heart and face on the persecuted immigrant.
ALIENS’ collaborators include John Grimsley, sci-fi lighting design; Billy Atwell, sci-fi sound-scapes; Bruce France, sci-fi film shorts; and Classical Vocalist Claudia Copeland with a recording of a 13th century Ode to the Black Madonna.
ALIENS was developed through a National Performance Network Creation Fund Award from the NPN, and co-commissioned by the Ashé Cultural Arts Center in New Orleans, MECA in Houston, and GALA Hispanic Theatre in Washington, DC.
What Critics Say about ALIENS:
Torres-Tama brings his take on immigration to the Guadalupe. ---San Antonio Express
Powerful performance art piece lets audience feel mistreatment of Hispanic immigrants... Torres-Tama's moving and visually stimulating piece holds a mirror--both literally and figuratively--up to the audience. ---Times-Picayune (New Orleans)
An adroit performer and lucid writer, José Torres-Tama bravely takes us to the dark side where most dare not to go. ---DC Theatre Scene
The multi-media “Aliens,” while at times laugh-out-loud funny, provocatively explores the history of immigration then and now in the United States … is an eye-opener, and perhaps a mind-opener and heart-opener. ---Bethlehem Press