THE SOUTHERN THEATER

JUNE 20–30, 2024

Reasons for Moving is an interdisciplinary and multilingual performance exploring the intergenerational scars of geopolitical displacement. Its script collects the writings of the collaborators and their families’ biographies, alongside found text on the circulation cycles of migratory animals and the natural world. The title comes from the final two lines of Keeping Things Whole, by the late Canadian poet Mark Strand: “we all have reasons for moving/I move to keep things whole.” Combining fictional and non-fictional stories, the ensemble investigates painful pasts as much as the present as a path forward. Reasons for Moving is especially relevant for local audiences, given Minnesota’s long history with displaced and displacing populations — hosting and uprooting is part of its fabric. Performer/collaborators are: Kalala Kiwanuka-Woernle, whose mother first left Uganda for the UK, and then arrived in the US on a student visa; Mai Moua Thao, whose parents are refugees from Laos by way of Thailand; and Skye Reddy, whose family lost their ancestral homelands in the colonial Partition of South Asia. Directed by Cláudia Tatinge Nascimento with media and sound design by Eliot Gray Fisher, lighting design and technical direction by Thomas Barrett, and costume design by Lynn Farrington.