11/26 OYE-Listen!
The Performance:
moshari: snapshots from home by sarwat rumi and imi rashid, accompanied by nikhil trivedi

moshari: snapshots from home is the lens through which writers sarwat rumi and imi rashid explore their three week journey to Bangladesh in December 2006/January 2007. This collaborative sampling, with nikhil trivedi on sitar, weaves poetry, memoir, song and music into the bizarre joys and surreal challenges of enduring the closet in their conservative homeland, while deeply engaged in family during Muslim holidays and political upheaval. 

Territory by Carol Ng & Julie Downey (aka AJ Viola)

Territory explores social and personal relationships to symbolic boundaries through words, images and movement. Carol Ng and AJ Viola's spoken word voices the human longing for connection and experience of isolation, with the backdrop of AJ's projected photographic images questioning the relevance of place. An interactive performance by Carol challenges the audience's ideas about alienation and inclusion.

And I love her by LaNita Joseph
 A lesbian love story about two African American women, who met, loved and is now separated by a wall of fear. Told through dance, holograms: and spoken word poetry the women sit on opposite ends of the stage going through trials of what they wish they could have and would have said but didn’t.

About the Artists
imi rashid is a queer bengali muslim writer, swimmer and pool fiend who very recently took a leap of faith by escaping twelve years of corporate peonage as an accountant in order to find her true calling. she was born in bangladesh, raised partly in boston and partly in dhaka, and has been freezing her butt off in chicago for the past 16 winters. she is published under a pseudonym in Voices of Resistance: Muslim Women on War, Faith and Sexuality (Seal Press, 2006) and two of her recent pieces have been accepted for publication in an anthology in progress tentatively titled Brown Souls. Her newest venture, a collaborative piece entitled moshari: snapshots from home, has been staged at the 2007 Kriti Festival/SAPAC’s VOR6 and the 2007 YAWP! benefit Untranslatable. imi is currently spending copious amounts of her free time contemplating what to do with the rest of her life, while maintaining her status as a writer, swimmer, pool fiend and, weather permitting, beach bum, with the intention to never set foot in corporate america again.

sarwat rumi is a bilingual Bengali American Muslim who has been writing since she could read. She has a B.A. in South Asian Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago. sarwat works toward social justice as a vigilante poet, teaching artist, and performance activist. With Mango Tribe, sarwat has co-written and performed in both the Chicago and NYC runs of the full length production, Sisters in the Smoke (2002, 2003); she also co-wrote, co-produced and acted in Creation Mythology for NYC's Henry Street Settlement (2004). She is the recipient of a Fresh Ink recognition for new music by Serpent Feline, granted by The Chicago Composer's Forum (2005). Sarwat's indy features include Voices of Resistance (2001-2007), the Asian American Jazz Festival (2004), Women OutLoud (2003, 2004), and the Guild Complex, where she humbly shared the stage with Adrienne Rich (2003). sarwat is currently finding her best magic in a collaboration called moshari: snapshots from home, a weaving of live poetry, prose, song and sitar that reveals the many layers of home, family, spirits, love, prayer and the daily striving to remain authentic and safe in a misogynistic, homophobic world. sarwat’s craft as solo artist, sister in the touring cast of Mango Tribe, and vocalist for Serpent Feline, takes her far from Chicago on a regular basis, but her words can always be found in the anthology Voices of Resistance: Muslim Women on War, Faith, and Sexuality (Seal Press, 2006), and her two chapbooks: the inverted sun, and WAR.

Julie Downey (aka AJ Viola) is an interdisciplinary artist who integrates photographic projections with poetry and prose in live performances with movement artists and musicians. Her belief in the shared power between individual and community influences the collaborative process in both art making and social justice activism.

Julie is a teaching artist in Chicago elementary schools through the Center for Community Arts Partnerships at Columbia College. She has also led arts workshops with Gallery 37, Snow City Arts Foundation, Young Chicago Authors and the Chicago Abused Women Coalition. She is pursuing an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts and Media at Columbia College.

Born and raised in Hong Kong, Carol Ng is a Chicago-based interdisciplinary and performing artist, art educator, and community activist. She received a Master of Arts in Art Education from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007, and a bachelor's degree in Arts from Columbia College Chicago in 2004. As a trained classical player of Pipa, a traditional Chinese instrument, she performed with local modern dance choreographers in 2002 and 2003 at Links Hall and The Duncan YMCA Chernin Center for the Arts in Chicago; performance pieces include 21 A.D. Asian Festival, 3 Threads, and Where is My Heel?. Carol teaches at Oakton Community College and Roosevelt University, and works as an art educator with the Silk Road Theater Project.

With an English degree from the University of Georgia in Athens and apprenticeship with Joel Hall, LaNita Joseph has been working in film and creative writing, as well as dance. Lanita Joseph has been choreographing different shows around the country from Dance Chicago and Collaborations in Chicago to the Choreographer's Ball in Los Angeles . In addition to her career as a choreographer, Lanita has also been very concerned with the youth. In particular, youth of color. Lanita has recently created a social awareness dance and theater company focusing on the struggles of women, minorities and the gbltq communities.