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!

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 7^th 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. 1^st, 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 29^th at the Second Presbyterian Church. The sale of these paintings goes to support Iraqi artists living in Syria. Together, we can make a difference.

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.

On December 8, the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (U.S. Helsinki Commission) hosted a special dance performance and discussion on the situation of Iraqi refugees. Intersections’ C. Eduardo Vargas was an invited panel discussant on Iraqi refugee issues, following a dance performance entitled Wishes of the Sailor by the Washington, DC-based contemporary dance company CityDance Ensemble.

CityDance Ensemble, and their Artistic Director and Co-Founder, Paul Gordon Emerson, presented an original work based on their experiences with the Iraqi refugee communities in Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria as part of the delegation of artists gathered by Intersections International’s Iraqi Voices Amplification Project (IVAP).

After the dance performance, Paul Emerson and Kathryn Pilkington—who also traveled with IVAP—joined C. Eduardo Vargas, Dr. Michel Gabaudan, Regional Representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and Christopher Morgan, City Dance’s Choreographer in a lively panel discussion concerning the motivation for the dance piece and the plight of Iraqi refugees.

Hosting the event were U.S. Senator Benjamin L. Cardin, Chairman of the U.S. Helsinki Commission and Co-Chairman Congressman Alcee L. Hastings.  This event that marked a new chapter in Intersections’ IVAP continued advocacy for Iraqi refugees, was held at the Capitol Visitor Center in Washington, DC.

Earlier that week, CityDance premiered Wishes of the Sailor in three sold-out performances at the Strathmore Center. Read an article about the dance in the Washington Post.

On Monday, December 14, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton highlighted the importance of the arts and artists in her remarks at Georgetown University on the Human Rights Agenda for the 21st Century. During a question and answer session, Secretary of State Clinton was asked about the importance of the arts and artists in helping to promote human rights. In her reply, Clinton stated:

“I remember some years ago seeing a play about women in Bosnia during the conflict there. It was so gripping. I still see the faces of those women who were pulled from their homes, separated from their husbands, often raped and left just as garbage on the side of the road. So I think that artists both individually and through their works can illustrate better than any speech I can give or any government policy we can promulgate that the spirit that lives within each of us, the right to think and dream and expand our boundaries, is not confined, no matter how hard they try, by any regime anywhere in the world. There is no way that you can deprive people from feeling those stirrings inside their soul. And artists can give voice to that. They can give shape and movement to it. And it is so important in places where people feel forgotten and marginalized and depressed and hopeless to have that glimmer that there is a better future, that there is a better way that they just have to hold onto.”

The piece was amazing- moving and powerful, which was no surprise coming from the talented Paul and fellow sojourner Kathryn Pilkington. What did surprise me was what relief I felt to not be alone on this issue—to be in the company of those who also wanted movement on this issue.

Coming back home after this amazing trip to the Middle East and trying to share with people the importance and complexities of this issue has been challenging to say the least. Mostly, because no one seems to know anything about it! (It is INDEED one of the most underreported crises of this century.) I certainly didn’t before this trip! So I have felt a great weight to inform people and tell the stories of the Iraqis I met. So, you can imagine the relief to hear senators and congressmen and generally people of high status speaking to this issue, all caused and inspired by the artistic piece performed.

I felt it was a real tribute to not only the work of CityDance, but also Intersections and what they have created here with IVAP. It is ALREADY making a difference! ART is helping to make a difference, to give voice to those who have none. We are creating conversations and opening doors for change around this issue.

Keep talking about the Iraqi refugee crisis. Keep the conversation alive. The Iraqis are counting on us.