Migration Play Cycle

Upcoming work-in-progress showings of the first play in the cycle, TOMORROW WILL BE SUNDAY:

March 25, 2023 - Arab American National Museum

April 13, 2023 - RiverRun Festival, The Kennedy Center

From the Tigris to the Detroit River, The Migration Play Cycle is an epic map of a play by nationally acclaimed Iraqi American playwright, Heather Raffo, co-commissioned by Art2Action, the Arab American National Museum, The Carver Community Cultural Center, and the National Performance Network (NPN), linking the world’s migration patterns to the daily transactions of our lives.  An ambitious theatrical experiment, it invites us to imagine a new relationship to human value, by first unpacking what we value. Uncovering a world where all populations must confront not only global migration, but their own.

An ambitious trans-local work researched across diasporic communities, The Migration Play Cycle centers local concerns into global contexts by offering a new theatrical platform for exploring migration and the global economy. Non-linear in form, and Brechtian in its value system, wherever audiences are on the map, economic interconnection means daily decisions impact people across the street, across town and across the world.  By bringing theatricality to facts and figures, by entering border towns and heartland supermarkets, this play seeks to inspire an understanding of a planet on the move and our daily impact on it.

In January 2022, Art2Action traveled to Mexico with Heather Raffo for a research and development residency. This residency included research on the economic drivers of global migration, an interview with activist filmmaker Gaba Cortes, an artistic exchange with dance-theatre company Mujeres en Ritual, and a free workshop at the Casa Arcoíris shelter for LGBTQ+ migrants.

From the playwright: “As an Iraqi American playwright, migration is personal to me.  In 2003, I had over one hundred family members living in Iraq, I now have two cousins left in the country.  In the last decade, my Iraqi relatives have scattered across four continents. My family understands what it means to be rooted to a place for thousands of years, then to scatter in less than ten.  While many audiences feel sympathetic to those impacted by war, the trajectory my family took can be traced to economic factors to which we all contribute.”

MIGRATION PLAY CYCLE is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation Fund Project co-commissioned by Art2Action, the Arab American National Museum, The Carver Community Cultural Center, and NPN. For more information, visit www.npnweb.org.