IVAP is proud to announce that 3LD, The Cell, and The Wild Project are each hosting a week of the play!
We are grateful to have such committed, experienced and enthusiastic partners on this project that recognize the power that art has to evoke compassion, build understanding and initiate the human transformation necessary to motivate social action.
Stay tuned!
Kim Schultz takes audiences on a journey to experience life as an Iraqi refugee.
“How could one person summarize so much pain, pride, traumas, love and suffering like an Iraqi refugee while she is, in fact, not an Iraqi refugee herself?” asked Ibrahim, an Iraqi refugee, after attending a reading by Kim Schultz of the play to come out of Intersections’ Iraqi Voices Amplification Project. “As a refugee myself, I gave up to the fact that no one can hold the complexity of the crisis, it’s so complicated and different. Yet I was wrong. In this event, I was captured from the first word until the end. It was brilliant.”
Those were the sentiments echoed after Intersections held the first public reading of No Place Called Home, a new play written and performed by IVAP artist Kim Schultz and directed by Sarah Cameron Sunde. More than 40 people –– including members of the NYC theater community and humanitarian aid organizations –– attended the reading, which marked the beginning of a larger collaboration with those who gathered.
The play tracks one American woman’s experience with Iraqi refugees as she accidentally falls in love with one of them. This one-woman, multimedia show with music opens this fall in a nomadic run throughout New York City. Each venue will provide unique opportunities to engage different audiences throughout the city, including the outer boroughs. There also will be opportunities to unveil other IVAP elements — dance, photo exhibits and film — as events are scheduled in conjunction with the play.
No Place Called Home is a compelling vehicle for American audiences to journey to meet Iraqi refugees without having to leave NYC. After Monday night’s reading, there is no doubt that it will be a strong motivator for people to take action to support Iraqis. Internationally known journalist Mona Eltahawy exclaimed in an e-mail after the reading, “Kim did a great job of acting as our eyes and ears to the refugees she met. She both humanized them, but just as importantly, clearly delineated the horror of their situation. It’s essential that more Americans get to hear an American retell those stories to them. It was a very cathartic experience for me –– it felt like a punch to the heart, but also inspired me and filled me with resolve.”
The play will open in New York City in early October. More details about the nomadic run of No Place Called Home are coming soon!
No Place Called Home, the play written and performed by IVAP artist Kim Schultz, announces the addition of SARAH CAMERON SUNDE as director of the play. Kim and Sarah have been working in development for the past few months on the play. Intersections is thrilled that Sarah joined the project and is collaborating on the piece that will go up in the fall.
Sarah Cameron Sunde is a New York-based director/translator specializing in new American work and contemporary plays in translation. She has directed four U.S. debut productions of plays by international master playwrights: THE ASPHALT KISS by Brazil’s Nelson Rodrigues (Drama Desk nominated production at 59E59*), and her own translations of NIGHT SINGS ITS SONGS, DEATHVARIATIONS and SA KA LA by Norway’s Jon Fosse – who considers her “his American voice” (all with Oslo Elsewhere). Other directing includes premieres of: THE DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL by Marielle Heller with Rachel Eckerling (3LD), THE AMISH PROJECT by Jessica Dickey (Rattlestick), WHAT MAY FALL by Peter Gil Sheridan (The Guthrie), GOOD HEIF by Maggie Smith and VELMA, DEAR by Carson Kreitzer (New Georges), MIRITA by Christopher Dunkley (Cherry Lane), ECHO’S LONGING and THE ALBATROSS AT SEA by Steven Gridley (Spring Theatreworks). Other work with: 52nd Street Project, New Dramatists, New Harmony Project, HERE, among other places. Sunde is the Associate Director of New Georges, one of NYC’s premiere downtown theater companies. She is also co-founder of Oslo Elsewhere and Translation Think Tank, and has spoken in venues throughout the country on the art of translation. Her work as a translator has been published by PAJ (Performing Arts Journal) and Words Without Borders. Alumni: Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, Women’s Project Directors Forum, Lincoln Center Directors Lab. Awards/Honors include: a Voice & Vision Residency, an Hermitage Foundation Residency, an American Scandinavian Society Artist Award, a NYtheatre.com Person-of-the-Year Award, and a Princess Grace Directing Award.
CityDance and Kim Schultz perform together at the gala.
On June 10th, Intersections hosted its first annual Intersector Awards Gala. The event was held at the Altman building in midtown Manhattan. A major theme for the night was celebrating the artistic works to come out of the Iraqi Voices Amplification Project. A gallery featured photographs of Iraqi Refugees by Alissa Everett and Paul Emerson. Each photo told the story of a different aspect of the refugee experience, from the effects of religious targeting to the dangers of working illegally in a host country. Michael Jordan premiered several of the ad campaigns he has been working on, including a print ad that compared the Iraqi refugee crisis to the crisis in Darfur.
Photos of refugees shot by Alissa Everett and Paul Emerson are displaced at the Intersections Gala
But the spot light was stolen by a first ever joint performance of excerpts from Kim Schultz’s new play, No Place Called Home, directed by Sarah Cameron Sunde and CityDance Ensembles, Wishes of the Sailor. The ten minute piece featured segments of No Place Called Home, which tracks one American woman’s experience with Iraqi refugees as she accidentally falls in love with one of them. Wishes of the Sailor grew out of the experiences of CityDance’s Kathryn Pilkington and Paul Emerson. Using the stories they heard during the IVAP trip, they set the dance, whose title comes from an Iraqi proverb “Sometimes the wind blows against the wishes of the sailor,” in a refugee resettlement waiting room, where there is too little to do, too much time to wait and an endless sense of how life has been upended for all of them.
A scene taking place in a UNHCR waiting room.
Through dance, the retelling of refugee stories and Kim’s experience as an American through whom these stories are told the audience went on a brief emotional journey exploring the realities of Iraqi refugees. Many in the audience found themselves in tears after the performance. “Wow! Not only was I in NYC at Intersection’s gala, but a part of me was also in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan in the lives of these refugees,” said gala attendee Scott Thompson. ” Thank you Kim for the gift of letting us know their stories more.”
No Place Called Home opens in New York City for a nomadic run in October. Check back for more details soon!
Monday was the deadliest day in Iraq this year. A series of coordinated attacks across the country killed more than 100 people and injured hundreds more. The attacks began shortly after 5 am and continued throughout the day in over 10 cities, including: Falluja, Samarra, Tarmiya, Suwyra, Mahmudiya, Basra, Hilla, Baghdad and at checkpoints on the border with Kurdistan. I mention the cities names because it’s all too easy to forget that these are neighborhoods where people live, go to work, go to school and try to go about their lives in the midst of war.
The violence in Iraq continues. Yesterday a body-bomb exploded in northwest Baghdad, killing 3 people and wounding 23 more. This morning a car bomb exploded in Sadr City, killing 9 and wounding others, which was followed later in the afternoon by a roadside bomb in Baghdad.
The significance of these events, in light of continued lack of a clear winner of the March 7th parliamentary elections in Iraq, cannot be overstated. With the US scheduled to draw down troops from about 94,000 today to 50,000 by Sept. 1st, questions need to be asked as to effects of this plan on the Iraqis we leave behind.
This month, The List Project released a new report, Tragedy on the Horizon, which details what will happen to our Iraqi allies if we do not take them with us when we leave. The report urges America to learn from the bloody lessons of our past and to answer our moral imperative not to abandon those who have helped us. America can initiate plans for a Guam Option, a not-unprecedented solution which airlifts Iraqi allies to Guam for processing. Our coalition allies have provided evacuations for their Iraqi employees and we should plan to do the same. Now is the time to sign the petition and send this report on to your representatives for their consideration and action.
But what about the Iraqis who have not worked with us? The 2.2 million who have fled their country to seek refuge in surrounding nations or those who have remained at home and faced the consequences? Their future is still uncertain. But what is certain is that we must not forget about their struggles. And we must not forget that we can do small things to make a difference.
This week, I’m am encouraging everyone to take a minute to sign the petition and if you are in New York City, come see an art exhibit by Iraqi artists now living in Damascus that was opened last week by Common Humanity, an NGO based here in New York City. The exhibit runs through May 29th at the Second Presbyterian Church. The sale of these paintings goes to support Iraqi artists living in Syria. Together, we can make a difference.
On Sunday, March 7th Journalist Charity Tooze was published in the CNN AC360 news blog where she described the challenges Iraq faces in its second election since the U.S. lead invasion in 2003. On Saturday, March 6th she was also published in The Huffington Post and described the security issues facing displaced Iraqis. Tooze included an interview with Intersections International’s C. Eduardo Vargas.
Read full CNN and Huffington Post articles.
Intersections International’s C. Eduardo Vargas was published in Politics3 Friday, March 5. Vargas outlined the obstacles faced by Iraqi refugees including limited access to healthcare, employment, legal protection, education and local integration. To remedy these issues, Vargas outlines how the U.S. can have a more prominent leadership role in the crisis while strengthening the capacity of civil society.
Fellow Intersections’ ChangeTheStory.net panelist Charity Tooze is a freelance journalist and academic focusing on politics in the Middle East. She is producing a multi-media project about the plight of the 2.2 million externally displaced Iraqi refugees which was recently featured in Worldfocus. To learn more about her project contact her at: charity@charitytooze.com.
Watch Video Excerpt
ChangeTheStory Panelists Michael Jordan, Charity Tooze, Kim Shultz and C. Eduardo Vargas
On Feb. 4, the ongoing Iraqi refugee crisis was the topic of the second in a series of panel discussions sponsored by Intersections’ ChangeTheStory.net Project. Panelists included media branding expert Michael Jordan; journalist Charity Tooze; artist Kim Schultz; and Intersections’ C. Eduardo Vargas, who manages the Iraqi Voices Amplification Project (IVAP). Visit the Intersections news page and staff blog to read more about the event.
Alissa Everett
Ami Gaston
C. Eduardo Vargas
Kathryn Pilkington
Kimberly Schultz
Kathryn Schulz
Megan Hoelle
Michael Jordan
Paul Emerson
Timothy Frakes
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