Workshop with José Torres-Tama (at Academy Theatre)

JOSE TORRES-TAMA PERFORMANCE WORKSHOP | SEPT. 9 | 6-9 PM | ACADEMY THEATRE

ArtsXchange is hosting this residency in collaboration with our friends at the historic Academy Theatre in Hapeville. We will welcome revolutionary artist and performance poet José Torres-Tama for a powerful residency that bridges history, memory, and movement.

A bold and unflinching voice in performance art, Torres-Tama will offer three performance workshops and three showings of his searing multimedia solo performance, United States of Amnesia: In a System that Seduces You to Forget, Dare to Remember.

Workshop tickets are $10, and performance tickets are $15.

WORKSHOPS:

The workshops will be from 6-9 p.m. Sept. 8 and Sept. 10 at ArtsXchange, 2148 Newnan St. in East Point.; and from 6-9 p.m. Sept. 9 at Academy Theatre, 599 N. Central Ave. in Hapeville. Participants will explore performance ritual, spoken word, and the role of collective memory in resistance. These sessions are open to all levels and invite artists, organizers, educators, and truth-tellers to engage creatively with their histories and communities. SPACE IS LIMITED!

PERFORMANCES:

Torres-Tama’s performances — which he describes as a “magical realist Latino voodoo aesthetic" — will be at 7 p.m. Sept. 11 at Academy Theatre; and at 7 p.m. Sept. 12 and 3 p.m. Sept. 13 at ArtsXchange. In the satirical, genre-bending show, he channels a “shamanistic time traveler” to conjure the past and expose the present.

United States of Amnesia connects the dots across centuries — from the Three-Fifths Compromise and Indian Removal Act to Operation Wetback and Zero Tolerance immigration policies — tracing a brutal throughline of dehumanizing legislation that uplifts white supremacist thinking while exploiting Black, Brown, and Indigenous labor. Through humor and radical remembering, Torres-Tama calls out the hypocrisy of the colonial settler system and demands an awakening from the induced amnesia of empire.

“The most radical thing an artist can do today is dare to remember in a culture submerged in amnesia, lies, and misinformation,” Torres-Tama said.

The residency is part of the ArtsXchange’s ongoing commitment to art as resistance and communal healing.

About the Artist

José Torres-Tama is an Ecuadorian-born interdisciplinary provocateur of Quechua indigenous descent. He is an award-winning performance and visual artist; published playwright and poet; photographer and journalist; and arts educator with the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans. Among many awards, he has received a Louisiana Theater Fellowship, three NPN Creation Fund Awards, and a MAPFUND Grant award for his Taco Truck Theater diverse ensemble on wheels.

From 2006 to 2011, he contributed post-Katrina commentaries that aired on NPR's Latino USA. He exposed the myriad human rights violations Latin American immigrant reconstruction workers endured while heroically contributing to the resurrection of the flooded port city of New Orleans. United States of Amnesia was developed through National Performance Network Creation Fund Award, and co-commissioned by the Ashé Cultural Arts Center in New Orleans and GALA Hispanic Theater in Washington, DC. Learn more.•

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Thanks to our funders! The official accommodation provider is Holiday Inn & Suites Atlanta Airport North.