For the past six years, Inferno Theatre has presented the Contemporary Diasporas Performance Festival—a multicultural, interdisciplinary performance and arts festival. Historically, this festival has been presented in Berkeley, CA featuring performances of diverse cultural roots, all developed in the San Francisco Bay Area.
However, due to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, this year’s festival Diasporas in the Domicile will be hosted online. Artists from around the Bay and now, around the world, submitted works that were created at home and will be streamed online June 19 and 20 at 7 pm.
Following each night’s showing will be a live talkback starting at 8:30 pm, giving audience members a chance to interact with the artists via video conference.
This year, the festival Diasporas in the Domicile is being presented by Inferno Theatre in partnership with Mosaic Silicon Valley, an initiative of Sangam Arts.
Meet the Artists
Diasporas in the Domicile: The Seventh Annual Contemporary Diasporas Performance Festival is made possible by thanks to the Civic Arts Grant Program of the City of Berkeley. Additional support is provided by the Henry Levy Group.
Special thanks to our partner Mosaic Silicon Valley, an initiative of Sangam Arts.
Diasporas in the Domicile
Program Information
Friday, June 19, 2020 at 7 pm
[Re]member
Artistic Director: Byb Kongo Bibene
Performers: Byb Kongo Bibene, Ida Mawu, Nkan Eladua
About:
My artistic work is very much oriented towards social justice issues, particularly to the socio-political, religious, and historical justice of the African People globally. Each of my projects underline one aspect of the African People's past, present, and future condition. This project underlines two things: the common history shared by Africans and African Americans and the lost memories of the history that finds its causes in the enslavement and then colonization of the African people. By questioning this shared history, the project allowed me to look at the tremendous work of the African women and men who fought hard battles to lead their people to freedom. Slavery and colonization contributed to this country’s quasi-lack of knowledge of Black people's history. This project allows an analysis of the points of connectedness between the Africans and African Americans.
Artist Bios:
Byb Bibene is an award-winning dance educator, choreographer, and performer working in theater, ethnic, urban, and contemporary dance forms. His own technique and aesthetic sensibility is rooted in the culture and dances of his country of origin, the Republic of Congo. He has toured the world and performed internationally with companies and choreographers originating from Africa, Europe, and the US. Bibene has a BS in Economics/Finance from Marien Ngouabi University, Congo, and an MFA in Dance, Creative Practice Saint Mary's College of California. He is the Artistic Director of Kiandanda Dance Theater and the Mbongui Square Festival.
Nkan Eledua (singer, actress and dancer/Nigeria) and Ida Mawu (singer-songwriter, performer, and guitaris/USA) are two incredible Bay Area musical artists who assisted Bibene with this work in progress, and first video iteration of project “[Re]member.”
What have we gotten into/what has gotten into us?
Heikki Koskinen - Music/Soundscape, Performer
Nan Busse - Creator, Performer, Video Editor
Tobey Kaplan - Text, Voice Over, Camera Operator
About:
This work intertwines outdoor chance elements with fabrication and spontaneity. Blending the present moment and honoring the past while still reaching toward a hopeful future through language, music /soundscape and movement. Improvisational poetic rhythms, compositional gestures, fields of vocabulary meant to please, surprise and engage curiosity.
Fun Fact - The collaborators on this project are all neighbors from the Maxwell Park area of Oakland.
Artist Bios:
Nan Busse - In addition to creating her own dances/shows, Nan has joined Deborah Hay's SPCP, danced around the world with Danny Nguyen, worked with many, many choreographers and dance companies and has performed (dance and didgeridoo) with musician Joe Lasqo and several new music artists. A resident fellow at Dorland Mountain Artists’ Colony, her pieces include “after Frost”, “Hands”. “A Sentence is Inside Itself,” (Best of SF Fringe) , and the “Joyce Project” --performances that include theatre, sound and movement centered around local history and personal stories.
Tobey Kaplan - Itinerant poet and educator, Tobey has encouraged creative writing, reading, and composition in the SF Bay for over 40 years at jails, mental health programs, community colleges and in K-12 through California Poets in the Schools. She has given poetry readings and literacy/social change workshops throughout the country. For the past twenty years, she has collaborated with musicians and performers, most recently Zooming her in open-mic poetry. Honors include an affiliate artist at the Headlands Center for the Arts, resident fellow at Dorland Mountain Artists’ Colony, and a Bay Area Arts Award/New Langton.
Heikki Koskinen is a Finnish musician now based in the Bay Area. Chosen as the top Finnish Jazz Trumpet Player in the 1970's, Heikki studied music at Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA. Heikki has led jazz groups and worked as a music educator. He is active in the Finnish community, composes music and plays multiple instruments.
cordon (excerpt)
Choreographed, Filmed, and Edited By: Zaquia Mahler Salinas
Dancers: Lauren Christie, Jaime Nixon
Original Music By: Jonny Tarr
About:
In English, the word cordon is often used to describe a blockade – restricting access to a place or thing by putting a line of people or objects around or in front of it. A cordon is a tool for limiting movement. But the word cordon is derived from the French word “corde,” meaning rope, string or cord. While roping off an area can create borders, cords can also tie things together. This duet is an excerpt of a longer work.
“cordon” is one piece of an evening of work developed for live performance, entitled “current.” Our company, DISCO RIOT was set to perform in April, but the show was canceled due to COVID19 and thus the work was adapted for dance on film. The videos were created with social distancing practices in place and are intended to document the experience of making work during this pandemic.
Artist Bios:
DISCO RIOT Artistic Director and Co-Founder, Zaquia Mahler Salinas, is a native of San Diego. After receiving her BA in Dance with Honors from UC Santa Barbara in 2011, she returned to San Diego and danced for Jean Isaacs’ San Diego Dance Theater from 2012-2018. In 2017 she obtained her MFA in Dance, Creative Practice from Saint Mary’s College of California where she focused on artistic development and dance as a platform for social justice. She is currently serving as dance faculty at San Diego City College and the Coronado School for Creative and Performing Arts. As a choreographer, Zaquia has presented dance works throughout California, and more recently in Texas, Peru, and Mexico. https://discoriot.org
Traces ...
Created By: Giulio Cesare Perrone
Violin: Carol Braves
Editing: Danielle Ferguson
Visual Artist/Painter/Videographer: Giulio Cesare Perrone
About:
Impulse, devotion, inventions. How do you trace … Angels and Myths? Winged human figures and mythological creatures are common in antiquity. You can find them in paintings or old archaeological fragments. Sometimes they bring flowers, other times they play trumpets or harps. Some brandish swords. Most often, however they fly and transmute. The most interesting finds show only fragments of the original; a bust or a severed head. But in their cropped form, they still suggest the grandiosity of the complete yet lost originals. They give the impression that what they are disclosing is not always readily accessible, but is merely revealed for a short time, a split second. That split second sparks my imagination and creates indelible impressions and marks, until the traces become the matrix and the starting points of my work. I trace my first mark of graphite on the canvas and new forms arise. I trace again and again until the traces reveal elusive evidence of newly created entities. In this short video, I want to give back this sense of tracing the details where my paintings began.
Artist Bios:
Giulio Cesare Perrone is a playwright, set and costume designer, a stage director, and visual artist. He began his career in his native Italy where he exhibited his artwork, directed and designed mainly for the theatre. Since his arrival in the United States in 1995, he has exhibited his artwork, directed and designed for both the theatre and opera. He was the recipient of a 2000 Pew National Artists Residency grant with Dell’Arte International for his adaptation of Milton’s Paradise Lost. Perrone’s fascination with mythology and modern literature has often focused on the eternal struggle between love and death as we can see in his Penthesilea, the Amazon Queen. In his work, Mr. Perrone digs through layer upon layer as an archeologist of the shared imagery of centuries of architecture and art. The artist’s more personal works sift through the sands of his personal mythology as well as the ephemeral truths contained in our myths with their pantheon of gods, ancient religions, and philosophies.
Perrone is the Producing Artistic Director of Inferno Theatre and the “Diasporas in the Domicile - the Seventh Annual Contemporary Diasporas Festival.”
All works are latex, charcoal, graphite, pencil and gold powder on canvas.
Sitar Rizwan Pradip Kumar Chakrabarti, Curated by Rudradeep Chakrabarti, A tribute to 100th birth anniversary of Pandit Ravi Shankar
Solo Performer: Dr. Pradip Kumar Chakrabarti
Director/Videographer: Rudradeep Chakrabarti
About:
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Ravi Shankar, Indian composer and sitarist. This is a tribute to Shankar with a short digital musical theatre performance in storytelling form. This short film introduces senior Indian classical musician and musicologist pandit Pradip Kumar Chakrabarti who is preserving Indian classical music and himself a torch bearer for years a living lineage of a particular tradition of Indian music and musicological ideology. In the performance he will showcase some melodies with Indian classical stringed Instrument sitar which is a modified form of a rare classical instrument called Veena from Ancient India and with time its journey of modification with Persian etymology and Genesis continuing the flowing music heritage. It is directed by his own son, theatre director and practitioner Rudradeep Chakrabarti in California via discussions and interactions on Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger video calls. Pradip’s entire family got involved and helped him to shoot footage for this project.
Artist Bios:
Dr. Pradip Kumar Chakrabarti is a senior disciple of the late pandit Ravi Shankar, Born in Kolkata city, the previous capital of India and still considered the cultural center of India, he started learning sitar at age of six from his uncle. In 1980 Pradip began studying under Ravi Shankar. He also obtained a PhD in music with his research on classical instrumental music of India, he is a torch bearer carrying the lineage and music family tradition of Seni Maihar Gharana established by the late Ustad Alauddin Khan sahab of India.
Rudradeep Chakrabarti obtained a master’s in theatre direction and design from the National School of Drama of India. He also has a BA in drama from Rabindra Bharati University of India. After extensive travels throughout Asia and Europe, Rudradeep found himself in the US and established an independent theatre ensemble in the San Francisco Bay Area, Theatre Movement International. With his company, Rudrapdeep works with contemporary political theatre performances that address Native American issues, themes on silk road traditions of south Asia, and is currently working on a series of short performances about the unheard of life of the indigenous Chiricahua apache tribes and their radical voice related to socio-political and environmental issues of New Mexico and Oklahoma.
Chicken Dinner
Director/Writer/Cook: Bill Stahl
Performers: Bill Stahl, Christina Shonkwiler
Artist Bios:
Christina has been an actor/puppeteer/clown for about 20 years and that playful spirit influences everything she does. She currently performs improv theater with her troupe, “Wondertown.” Christina also practices healing arts, including Constellations and Hypnotherapy in the method of Depth Hypnosis. http://myheartsturningpoint.wixsite.com/constellations
Bill Stahl is a San Francisco Bay Area improv theater performer and improv coach. He was regularly performing in Oakland when the COVID-19 crisis started in March 2020. Stuck at home, he started making short cooking videos to post on Facebook and then YouTube, to help his friends with cooking.
El Rendimiento del Garaje
Written, Directed, and Produced By: Robert Fields
Performers: Carol Braves, Robert Fields
About:
It is a Saturday morning in May 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. How and where do two friends play music together? The garage, of course. Carol and Robert chose two of Robert’s original pieces that express a melange of feelings including sadness, anxiety, uncertainty as well as hope for our world. The garden images represent a place of beauty, peace and oneness with nature. The birds remind us to allow our spirits to “soar” above the storm.
Artist Bios:
Carol Braves (Oakland, CA) and Robert Fields (Richmond, CA) met at an Argentine Tango lesson 15 years ago. They discovered they were both musicians and formed “Molinete” to work on Robert’s original tango music. The group evolved into a quartet that focuses on original music which stays true to the feelings of tango music. Carol is a musician, gardener, dancer and has performed as an actor, musician and music director with Inferno Theatre. Robert is a musician, composer, architect, and playwright. Molinete’s first CD, “All Tango’ed Up” will be available on CD Baby June 15, 2020. https://molinetemusic.com/
Mosaic Silicon Valley Presents: Precious Scars
Created by Ray Furuta, master flutist, and featuring several traditional instrument musicians from varied cultures, “Precious Scars” is a musical testament to the Japanese internee experience. Mosaic will present excerpts from the complete work as an artistic statement that shines a light on current, similar, immigrant-phobic, prejudiced policies and practices.
Original Concept and Narrative: Ray Furuta
Composers: Ray Furuta, Amr Selim, Vico Diaz
Performed By: Common Sounds Ensemble
Visual Design: Renee Billingslea
Spoken Word: Demone Carter
https://sangamarts.org/mosaic-fellow-ray-furuta
Saturday, June 20, 2020 at 7 pm
For Honor
Writer/Director: Lee Sankowich
Actors: Willem Long, Jessica Waldman
About:
Over 40 years ago I read about a young group of Jewish resisters in the Warsaw Ghetto, where 450,000 Polish Jews were walled in a 1½ square mile area of Warsaw Poland by the occupying Nazi regime. Most of them were sent to the death camp at Treblinka or died in the streets from typhus or starvation. When only 45,000 were left alive in the Ghetto, the leader of the Resistance, Mordechai Analewitz, told them there was only one thing left that they could control, and that is how they die: “We can live with honor and we can die with honor.” Completely out manned and out armed, approximately 300 young males and females took part in the Uprising, holding off the German army 27 days, longer than France or Poland were able to accomplish. Impressed and moved by their courage and resolve, I vowed to write about them some day. After numerous interviews and research, For Honor, a docudrama with music, is the result of years of determination.
Artist Bios:
Lee Sankowich served as Artistic Director of the Marin Theatre Company from 1990 to 2006 where he directed 45 plays including two world premieres of state sanctioned Tennessee Williams plays. His career got started with highly successful productions of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest which ran for 5 ½ years in San Francisco, 2 ½ years in New York, and 1 ½ years in Boston. He has directed at major regional theatres around the country and was an Associate Professor of Drama at Carnegie Mellon University. His most recent productions were Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at San Jose Stage and The Spanish Prayer Book at the Road Theatre Company in Los Angeles. Lee owns the Zephyr Theatre in Los Angeles where he has produced and directed numerous plays. Among his awards are four Bay Area Critics Awards. His first work as a playwright is For Honor, a docudrama with music of the young participants in the Uprising of the Warsaw Ghetto.
Willem Long is proud to reprise his role as Yusef. Thank you, Lee Sankowich, for this opportunity and for a beautiful script chronicling a history that is deeply important. Thank you to Inferno Theatre and the Diaspora Festival for engaging important stories in a pivotal and difficult era. Willem is a member of Actors Equity and was trained at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. Other memorable productions include A Life in the Rye (Theatre for a New City), Tempest Redux (Odyssey Theatre), An Octoroon (Capital Stage), Tribes (Phoenix Theatre AZ) and Titus Andronicus (CalShakes).
Jessica Waldman is a New York City based actor. She received her BA in Drama from Stanford University, and prior to moving to NYC, she performed extensively throughout the Bay Area with companies including The Cutting Ball Theatre, SF Shakespeare Company, 3Girls Theatre Company, and Stanford Repertory Theatre. She has had the pleasure of working with Lee Sankowich in previous readings and presentations of For Honor, and is honored to continue working on this meaningful project. When not acting, Jessica teaches yoga with CorePower Yoga and is a private academic tutor for students grades K-12. http://www.jessicawaldman.com
Dreams of a Mother-To-Be
Choreographer/Dancer: Surabhi Bharadwaj
Music Credits: Rohith Bhat and Sharat Prabhat, Ganesh and Kumaresh
About:
Dreams of a Mother-To-Be is a reflection of my ongoing journey through pregnancy. It explores the thoughts and eagerness of a mother-to-be. As you can see, the mother here is a dancer who is used to dancing, even in her dreams! But this time her dream takes a different turn. Her heart melts when she hears the baby's first word, "Amma!". She feels unbounded joy when she sees her baby’s first wobbly steps as she waits to let the baby fall into her arms! She wakes up from her dream, of course, only to find that this is soon going to be real! The second part of this dance explores her embracing the changes in her body and life. Accepting everything from the ever-growing belly to her loss of balance, she experiences the new life inside her with a heart full of love.
Artist Bios:
Surabhi Bharadwaj, Artistic Director of Siddhi Dance Academy, Dublin, California, is a seasoned Bharatanatyam dancer, trained under eminent Gurus in India. She has an MFA in Dance, Design and Production from Saint Mary’s College of California and also holds an MFA in Bharatanatyam from Sastra University, India. Surabhi is an Empanelled Artist of the Indian Council of Cultural Relations and has won accolades for her performances across the globe. She has worked as the Principal Dancer of two leading classical dance companies in India. Her debut production: Ashrutam – The Unheard Voice, premiered at San Francisco in November 2019 received rave reviews and she hopes to continue to create work and reach diverse communities through her dance. http://www.surabhibharadwaj.com
Process. Journey :|| (no result…)
Joe Orrach: Creative Producer
Performers: Peter Boyer, Joe Orrach, Colum Morgan
About:
Meeting every three days over the past two months, these three artists ritualized a process on Zoom, redefining their working spaces, exchanging views of themselves, by showing how a simple, direct beginning to a day’s work, exposes a journey of art, with no result…
Artist Bios:
Joe Orrach, international performance artist from the East Bay, reached out into the COVID-shaken Bay Area community to invite visual artist & painter Peter Boyer, and recent SF transplant Colum Morgan to collaborate on a theatre project, for Diasporas in the Domicile.
Joe Orrach Performance Project - https://www.jopproject.org
Peter Boyer - https://www.peterboyer.com
Colum Morgan - https://colum.info
Monologue from “How To Get From Here To There”
Playwright: Sharmon J. Hilfinger
Actor: Ben Elie
About:
Berk is a journalist writing the script for a 6-part TV show entitled How To Get From Here To There, which explores what we would need to change in order to live a fossil fuel free life. Each episode explores some aspect of our daily life and how it is connected to fossil fuels. In this scene, he is at home, rehearsing his idea for the beginning of a segment about Household Goods.
Artist Bios:
Sharmon J. Hilfiger has been writing plays for over thirty years. She is also the founder of BootStrap Theater Foundation, a non-profit company that develops and produces new plays. Her plays have been produced by BootStrap, in conjunction with Inferno Theatre, Pear Theatre, TheatreFirst, and Heartland Theater. Many of her plays focus on environmental issues.
Ben Elie lives in Oakland, California. 29 years old. He works as a video creative and an actor. http://fridaysfilms.com
June 1, 2020
Created & Performed By: Joan Schirle
About:
My theatre work and teaching for many years has involved the study of mask performance. The characters in this video were originally part of Second Skin, a solo mask show I developed in 2000 and toured for 7 years, directed by Giulio Perrone and produced by Dell’Arte International. Most of these masks were made by artists in Bali, where I’ve made 20 study trips since 1996. But what was important to say two decades ago is not what is important to say today; though these characters have been asleep for years, they have awakened to reflect on events we are living now. June 1, 2020 is inspired by a moment in time, with characters responding to an unseen reporter’s question: “During this time of pandemic, have you had more time for introspection and self-discovery?”
Artist Bios:
Joan Schirle is an actor/director/writer/teacher, and Founding Artistic Director of Dell'Arte International in Blue Lake, CA. Roles with Dell'Arte span three decades; also Yale Rep, San Diego Rep, and last summer she portrayed a clown with dementia in Going Down In Flames at Headwaters Theater, Portland, OR. She is currently librettist/producer of an opera based on the letters of painter Morris Graves in collaboration with composer Gina Leishman. Directing: San Diego Rep, Bloomsburg Ensemble, Alley Theatre, A Jewish Theatre, Dell’Arte. Teaching: acting, mask, commedia dell’arte, and Teaching Embodied Practice; senior teacher, FM Alexander Technique. Lifetime Achievement Award: Association of Theatre Movement Educators. TCG/Fox Foundation National Resident Artists grant for Distinguished Achievement. https://dellarte.com
Three Drums Traveling in Space
Performer: Amir Etemadzadeh
About:
This work is inspired by the Full moon and is an attempt to showcase the sound of three drums in the musical space between moon and earth.
Artist Bios:
Amir A Etemadzadeh is a Middle Eastern musician, instructor, performer, and composer. Born and raised in Iran, he received an extensive education in music from various masters and attended Tehran Music University. After arriving in the US in 2003, he expanded his portfolio to include percussion instruments from around the world. Etemadzadeh has collaborated in numerous performances and recordings with several known musicians and groups, such as Ethel String Quartet, Hafez Modirzadeh, Ramin Zoufonoun, Miriam Pretz, Qadim Ensemble, Silk Road Festival, and Cal Poly Middle Eastern Music Orchestra to name a few. Passionate about promoting peace through music and music education, Etemadzadeh manages his own organization, Mint Tea Music Production, and a music academy. https://www.amirschoolofmusic.com
The Shamshine Blind
Writer/Performer: Paz Pardo
About:
This is an excerpt from The Shamshine Blind, a speculative fiction noir set in a world of mind-bending psychoweapons. In this alternate history, Argentina brought the United States to its knees during the 1980’s Malvinas war, and periodic Global Hope Depletion Events cast a pall over the daily grind. In the shadows of a ruined San Francisco, Agent Kay Curtida must get to the heart of a conspiracy that threatens the American Dream itself.
Artist Bio:
Paz Pardo is a writer with an MFA from UT Austin’s Michener Center. The Shamshine Blind is her first novel. Her plays include YOU/EMMA (most recently at the Pear Ave Theater), Milton, MI (LTC Carnaval reading 2018, Bay Area Playwrights Festival Finalist 2016), Movimiento Perpetuo/Perpetual Motion, which she has performed in 11 cities in three countries, Duct Tape Girl and Fetish Chick Conquer the World (BootStrap Theater Foundation, NYC), and RubberMatch (RED CARAVAN, NYC). She and Enrique Lozano are the Grande/Bravo translation team. Her writing has appeared in The Brooklyn Review, Encountering Ensemble, Howlround, and Volume 1 of the I Scream Social Anthology. Djerassi fellow 2019. BA, Stanford. Fulbright Award, Buenos Aires, 2012. https://www.pazsays.com
Mosaic Silicon Valley Presents: The Ancient Contemporary: A meeting of Cambodian Classical, Indian Odissi, and Modern Contemporary movements
Cambodian classical and Indian Odissi are both ancient traditions and share stylistic movements. Indian Odissi and Modern Contemporary share the practice of nuanced story telling through dance. This presentation highlights the common thread between cultures even as it celebrates the differences.
Artists:
Charya Burt - https://sangamarts.org/mosaic-fellow-charya-burt
Niharika Mohanty and company, Guru Shradha - https://sangamarts.org/mosaic-fellow-niharika-mohanty
Coleen Lorenz and Nichole Lorenz - https://sangamarts.org/mosaic-fellow-coleen-lorenz