Press for the Live Performance of Reasons for Moving at the Southern Theater

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Reasons for Moving

An Interdisciplinary Performance About Displacement

June 20-30

The Southern Theater

REASONS FOR MOVING is an interdisciplinary performance about the experiences of first, second, and third generation immigrants. Performers are: Kalala Kiwanuka-Woernle, whose mother left Uganda for the UK and later came to the US on a student visa; Mai Moua Thao, born in a refugee camp in Thailand; and Skye Reddy, whose family lost their ancestral homelands in the colonial Partition of South Asia. Their families’ biographies anchor an exploration of intergenerational and social negotiations of culture, memory and imagination. REASONS FOR MOVING brings together dance, theater, and digital media to frame performance as a site to engage community conversation about how cultures of origin inform our identities outside of their homelands.

Director Cláudia Tatinge Nascimento explains that REASONS FOR MOVING is not a documentary performance, but rather mixes fact and fiction: “it highlights how transgenerational memory is transmitted: our imagination fills the gaps in the stories told by our elders.” Performer Skye Reddy states that “coming from cultures that traditionally do not have a strong written tradition, the stories of previous generations have died with them; REASONS FOR MOVING has given me an avenue to ask questions about my family's origins that I didn't even think to ask until we began creating.” The performance’s title comes from a line in the poem “Keeping Things Whole,” by Mark Strand. In response, Mai Moua Thao reminds us that “The Hmong community is a stateless nation. Displacement and migration have always been a part of the people’s history, they are actually connected by history of moving away and moving forward.” Skye Reddy adds: “REASONS FOR MOVING is forward-looking in a way that I think lots of first- and second-generation immigrants can resonate with, me included.”

“REASONS FOR MOVING challenges the idea that the immigrant experience is monolithic,” says performer Kalala Kiwanuka-Woernle. “Many of us are unaware of the complex legacies our elders pass down to us,” says digital designer Eliot Gray Fisher. The creative team wishes that the piece invites audiences to recognize something from their own story in the stories we present, and to learn something they didn’t know about someone else’s story. They hope that REASONS FOR MOVING can remind audiences of how alike we are-- not in our suffering but in our human desire to keep being, despite the world around us.

Cláudia Tatinge Nascimento directs Kalala Kiwanuka-Woernle, Mai Moua Thao, and Skye Reddy. The design team includes Eliot Gray Fisher (media and sound), Thomas Barrett (lighting and props), and Lynn Farrington (costumes). Scenic design by Thomas Barrett, Eliot Gray Fisher, and Cláudia Tatinge Nascimento.

PRESS PHOTOS:

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Kalala Kiwanuka-Woernle (she/her) is an actor based in Boston and the Twin Cities. She studied acting at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center and the London Academy of Music & Dramatic Arts, and received a B.A. in Theater and Dance from Macalester College. Professional theater credits include appearances at Penumbra Theatre (Flex, Spittin’ Seeds, Sugar in Our Wounds), Open Window Theatre (The Originalist), and Moonbox Productions (Once Upon a Carnival). Kalala has acted in the feature film Fakes, the web series Fallin’ Off, short films 528 and One Night Only, and the pilot Sins on 7th Street.  

Mai Moua Thao (she/her) explores different mediums of storytelling in her journey to becoming a screenwriter-director. She dabbles in theater/dance, photography, and literature. Her work has been supported by community-centered organizations such as The Southeast Asian Diaspora Project (SEAD), St. Paul Neighborhood Network (SPNN), Filmscore Fest, and more. Professional theater credits include roles in MN Opera and Exposed Brick Theater productions. She is a first-generation graduate of Macalester College ‘22, an alum of the Imagining America fellowship, and a '23-'24 Theater Mu: Mu Tang Clan fellow. This coming fall, Mai will pursue an MFA in Film at Columbia University. Look forward to screenings of Modern Shaman and OUTKASTS this summer! Mai is honored to take the stage with pheneomenal artists and shares her heart for the Hmong community through Reasons for Moving.

Skye Reddy (they/them) is a South Asian performing artist and filmmaker. Their screendance work has been shown at festivals in India and the US, and featured in the LA Times. Skye's latest dance film, created during a residency at Tofte Lake Center, is currently in post-production. In different capacities, they have worked with Black Ensemble Productions, Red Eye Theater, MN Opera, Asian Media Access, Theater Mu, LimeArts, and on various Twin Cities-based short films. A graduate of Macalester College, Skye is a 2024 Pillsbury House + Theatre Naked Stages Fellow, and was the 2022-23 Production Management Fellow at Children’s Theatre Company.

Thomas Barrett (he/him) has been the Technical Director and a Designer at Macalester College since 1990. He has worked throughout the Twin Cities as a scenic and lighting designer. His design work has been featured at Mixed Blood Theater, Skylark Opera, Stages Theater, Knott's Camp Snoopy, History Theater, and Paul Bunyan Playhouse, among others. Some of his favorite productions include: The Love Song of J. Robert Oppenheimer at Macalester College, Ruined at Mixed Blood Theater, and A Christmas Carol at Stages Theater.

Lynn Farrington (she/her) has been a costume designer in the Twin Cities for over 30 years. After graduating from Hamline University and attending the University of Minnesota for graduate studies, she supervised professional costume shops for over a decade before becoming the resident costume designer at Macalester College until 2021. She has been a professional costume designer for many local theater companies, working extensively with the History Theater and Skylark Opera. Additionally, she has designed and built costumes for many national tours including A Christmas Carol and Forbidden Broadway. Favorite productions include Bittersweet at Skylark Opera, Fire Ball at the History Theater, and India Song at Macalester College.

Eliot Gray Fisher (he/him) is an interdisciplinary arts worker whose hybrid practice connects live bodies with new technologies to shift our focus from the individual to the collective. As co-director of ARCOS, he creates video, music, and story, as well as performs. He has composed music and designed sound for film, theater, and dance, including an awarded commission from the Charles and Joan Gross Family Foundation and a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts to collaborate with musicians in Tbilisi, Georgia. He has also conducted documentary video fieldwork recognized by an award from the Paul Robeson Fund for Independent Media, including in Sonora and Yucatán, Mexico; Minas Gerais, Brazil; and Victoria, Australia. He has built interactive installations selected for Currents New Media and commissioned by Ammerman Center for Arts and Technology and UNESCO. He has participated in artist residencies including Ucross Foundation, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and Signal Culture; taught at College of Santa Fe, University of Texas at Austin, and Hollins University; served as a guest artist at Macalester College, University of Michigan, Colorado College, and School of the Art Institute of Chicago; and published in USITT’s Theatre Design & Technology journal and The Bloomsbury Handbook of Dance and Philosophy. He has BA degrees in Film Studies from Wesleyan University, where he received the Leavell Memorial Prize in Film, and Documentary Studies from the College of Santa Fe, and an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College.

Cláudia Tatinge Nascimento (she/ela) is an artist-scholar with an interest in experimental, ensemble, and political dance and theater. She began a professional acting career while living in Brazil. In the United States, Tatinge Nascimento joined Cleveland’s New World Performance Laboratory and performed in Europe, North and South America. With NWPL, she participated in Jerzy Grotowski’s final Objective Drama Session at UC-Irvine. She received a Consulate General of Brazil in New York Arts Grant to direct Pornographic Angel, her published adaptation of Nelson Rodrigues’ short stories at The Ohio Theater. She is the dramaturg for Li Chiao-Ping Dance’s Here Lies the Truth, a dance piece on social inequities that has toured to Honolulu, San Francisco, Minneapolis, and Las Vegas. In the Twin Cities, Tatinge Nascimento has collaborated with Exposed Brick and Playwrights’ Center. The author of After the Long Silence: The Theater of Brazil’s Post-Dictatorship Generation and Crossing Cultural Borders Through the Actor’s Work: Foreign Bodies of Knowledge, both from Routledge, her articles appear internationally in theater and performance studies anthologies, as well as in journals such as A[l]berto and Folhetim (Brazil), Biblioteca Teatrale (Italy), Didaskalia (Poland), Studia Dramatica (Romania), and TDR, Yale’s Theater, and Theater Research International (United States). She was a fellow at Trinity College Dublin’s Long Room Hub, Wesleyan University’s Center for the Humanities, Freie Universität-Berlin, and most recently an artist-in-residence at Caldera Arts Center. Tatinge Nascimento was a Professor of Theater at Wesleyan University before joining Macalester College as the chair of the Theater and Dance Department.

Reasons for Moving

More info and tickets: https://southerntheater.org/shows/reasons-for-moving or  https://www.reasonsformoving.org/

Tickets
$20 — General Admission

$15 — Students and Seniors

Performance Schedule
Thursday, June 20, 7:30pm Opening
Friday, June 21, 7:30pm
Saturday, June 22, 7:30pm (followed by a talkback)
Sunday, June 23, 4:00pm (followed by a talkback)

Thursday, June 27, 7:30pm
Friday, June 28, 7:30pm
Saturday, June 29, 7:30pm
Sunday, June 30, 4:00pm

Run Time
Approximately 60 minutes

Age Recommendation
Ages 12 and up.

Accessibility
Contact us at reasonsformoving24@gmail.com or (612) 340-0155 for accessibility information and requests.

Location and Parking

The Southern Theatre

1420 Washington Ave S, Minneapolis, MN 55454 (Map)

(612) 340-0155

Public Parking is located in the Courtyard Marriott Ramp located next to The Southern Theater, 1500 Washington Ave S.

Metered parking is also available on the streets surrounding the theater: Washington Ave, S 15th Ave, and Cedar Ave.

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