Ashé Cultural Arts Center
Presents the Premiere of
UNITED STATES OF AMNESIA:
Dare to Remember
Written & Performed by
José Torres-Tama
Ashé Powerhouse Theater
Fri-Sat, Sept 23-24, 2022 @ 8pm
Doors Open @ 7:15pm
1731 Baronne Street
New Orleans, LA
Tickets Link Here
AsheNOLA Events Link
Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month,
the Ashé Cultural Arts Center presents
NEA award-winning performance artist,
published playwright & poet,
and interdisciplinary troublemaker
José Torres-Tama
in his new solo show.
Lighting Design: John Grimsley
Film Shorts:
Bruce France
Tshombe Tshanti
José Torres-Tama
Also, this show celebrates 30 years that Torres-Tama
has been developing original one-man plays in New Orleans.
In 1992, the Contemporary Arts Center commissioned his
first performance solo, as part of the Live Arts Festival
curated by then Performing Arts Director, James Borders.
UNITED STATES OF AMNESIA
is driven by a visually dynamic
magical realist Latino voodoo
aesthetics, and Torres-Tama inhabits the role of a
“Shamanistic Time Traveler” with invocations, spoken word,
and performance rituals—where the sacred and profane converge.
Peppered with biting sardonic humor, he addresses a forgotten
legacy of anti-immigrant laws such as Operation Wetback (1954),
Arizona's SB 1070 (2010), and the Zero Tolerance Policy (2018).
He reminds us that the current anti-immigrant hysteria
gripping the country (for 21 years since the 9/11 tragedy)
is nothing new in a system that readily demonizes
the “immigrant” other to justify
the exploitation of their labor.
He proclaims the UNITED STATES OF AMNESIA seduces people to embrace forgetting, and dares us to remember that blind nationalism has led to a resurrection of white supremacy—while the lingering pandemic has unmasked serious fault lines
of a crumbling capitalist empire.
The most radical thing an artist can do today is dare to remember in a culture submerged in amnesia, lies, and misinformation! --- José Torres-Tama
In this fleeting era of racial reckoning post-murder of George Floyd,
white police are still killing Black people; there’s a rise in anti-Asian hate crimes;
Louisiana ICE Jails detain thousands of Latin American immigrants indefinitely;
and the pandemic disparities persist in health care, employment, and housing.
It’s all enough to cause pandemic melancholic funk,
but the artist inspires a revolutionary paradigm shift
with astute and comic observations.
UNITED STATES OF AMNESIA
is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation Fund Project
co-commissioned by GALA Hispanic Theatre in DC in partnership with the
Ashé Cultural Arts Center in New Orleans.
Additional support has come from a
2021 NEFA Development Grant,
and a 2022 Platforms Fund.
Torres-Tama has had a long-time relationship with
GALA Hispanic Theatre
and the Ashé Cultural Arts Center.
Both arts entities commissioned his critically acclaimed
Aliens, Immigrants & Other Evildoers
performance.
This is the final performance of an Immigration Trilogy
the artist began back in 2005 with his post-Katrina solo,
The Cone of Uncertainty, and it includes his Aliens show.
This Immigration Trilogy of one-man plays & performance texts
will be published in a forthcoming book.
US OF AMNESIA
had its DC premiere at GALA Hispanic Theatre
on Saturday & Sunday, June 11 & 12, 2022.
The show received a rave review in the
DC Metro News Theater Section.
When Torres-Tama’s emotional vulnerability aligns with the facts he presents,
his honesty clears the waters, and makes it possible for us to see the full depth of this history,
the line that traces from then, through now, and on to the future.
United States of Amnesia shines when it does this, finding the specificity and humanity
while covering broad swaths of history. ---DC Metro News
