Through Time is in it's fourth year of creating original theatrical events with refugees and asylees to address the issues these communities face in trying to find home.
This summer Notch is providing theatre workshops for refugee youth in collaboration with Church World Services, an international organization transforming communities around the globe through just and sustainable responses to hunger, poverty, displacement, and disaster.
"We are all migrants through time"
--Mohsin Hamid, Exit West
In fall 2022, Notch was honored to work with St. Ann's Warehouse and The Walk to invite Little Amal to New York City where (alongside 100 immigrant, asylee, and refugee youth) she met the Statue of Liberty. Little Amal is a 3.5 meter-tall living artwork, a giant puppet of a 10-year-old Syrian refugee girl who has travelled over 9,000km across 12 countries to bring attention to the issues facing refugees, asylees and especially unaccompanied minors worldwide.
In 2020 and 2021, Notch collaborated with coLAB Arts and the Reformed Church of Highland Park's Affordable Housing Corporation (RCHP-AHC), which helps resettle refugees from around the world in central New Jersey, provides home studies and post-release services to unaccompanied refugee minors, and assists people who have been subjected to human trafficking. Over 9 months we ran story circles and workshops to develop a series plays with the diverse communities served by RCHP-AHC, in an effort to share the story of how their mutual aid service work transforms lives.
Our work together culminated in A BLOCK PARTY / PLAY READING with music by DJ Kermit Moss, food from Global Grace Café (a refugee run catering company), and community conversation! Check out photos and resources below .
Our work together culminated in A BLOCK PARTY / PLAY READING with music by DJ Kermit Moss, food from Global Grace Café (a refugee run catering company), and community conversation! Check out photos and resources below .
“The news in those days was full of war and migrants and nativists, and it was full of fracturing too, of regions pulling away from nations, and cities pulling away from hinterlands,
and it seemed that as everyone was coming together everyone was also moving apart. Without borders nations appeared to be becoming somewhat illusory, and people were questioning what role they had to play.” ― Mohsin Hamid, Exit West
and it seemed that as everyone was coming together everyone was also moving apart. Without borders nations appeared to be becoming somewhat illusory, and people were questioning what role they had to play.” ― Mohsin Hamid, Exit West
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For World Refugee Day, we presented a preview of the play featuring Portland Thomas, J. Richey Nash and members of the I-Rise staff!
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Notch had the pleasure of working with youth at the I-RISE After School program.
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Elinor T Vanderburg, Playwright
We held Story Circle workshops with the retiree community at RCHP and in February we read a first draft of a short play based on their stories and conversations. You can see the full text of that short play here, on the project's blog.
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In April, we had a first reading of the play with community for feedback. (Pets optional)
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Meet Malkia Okech, program coordinator!
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Malkia is a Philadelphia-based researcher, cultural producer, and community archaeologist. They are interested in the cross-sections of multi-modal archaeology, art, technology, cultural heritage, anti-capitalism, and liberation. Malkia graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2019 with degrees in Near Eastern Language & Civilization and Digital Humanities. They are the Associate Producer for Black Spatial Relics, an artist residency and annual convening exploring slavery, justice and freedom. She is an Activist-Curator Fellow for the Free Library and PASCAL consortium, where she is conducting Abolitionist research and community archive building. Malkia is the founder and curator of Memory Studio, an interdisciplinary maker-space reckoning with decolonial knowledge accumulation, production, and speculation. Her praxis formed by the past, present, and future continuum of freedom dreaming.
Visit Malkia's website by clicking here. |
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Click below for a Broadway World article about the project's launch:
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