PerformancerUS: “Performing Ourselves, Performing our Histories”

PerformancerUS will be presenting: Performing Ourselves, Performing our Histories, a series of poems, monologues, and dialogues inspired by the Oral Narratives of Latin@ in Ohio (ONLO) archive, and each of the ensemble members personal and collective stories. This performance piece engages with the archive and finds common ground on the stories/histories of other Latina/o/x by creatively devising a piece that is centered on our collective experience with loss, gain, acceptance, and belonging as it relates to identity, language, culture and/or immigration status. This project incorporates participants cultural ways of knowing and doing, as integral to storytelling and empowerment.

This workshop, after the performance, will provide a culturally engaging model for Latina/o/x students that enhances our sense of belonging, bicultural and bilingual experiences, and racial or ethnic identity, while also providing opportunities for self-expression. The workshop uses oral history as a tool for creating spaces of trust and communal sharing of knowledge. We will discuss steps on how to devise an ethnographically-informed performance and offer a model for using oral histories as knowledge production that highlights community collaboration as a source of pride and honor. The workshop is highly interactive and will ask the audience to reflect on best practices for engaging in fruitful conversations about language, culture, and belonging.