No Place Called Home will be performed in Washington D.C. at the famous Busboys and Poets on 5th and K on March 17 at 830pm. Fred Johnson will be joining Kim onstage to help tell the stories of Iraqi refugees with story and song. Suggested donation at the door: $15

Hope you can join us or help us spread the word to your DC friends!

http://www.busboysandpoets.com

It was in many ways a landmark week for us. Wednesday night’s talk back brought special guests Larry Winters and Andrew Roberts, both veterans, to the stage to share their experience in combat and the importance of humanizing “the enemy.” Mr. Roberts remembered being invited to an Iraqi wedding by his interpreter while serving in Iraq and his realization that not all Iraqis wanted to kill him. Mr. Winters shared his journey back to Vietnam to apologize to the people who he’d once been told to kill.

We were also joined this week by Mr. Mike Otterman, author of Erasing Iraq: the Human Cost of Carnage. Mr. Otterman brought his family to see the play because he believes that it was the best way for them to get a sense of what it was actually like to go an interview Iraqis in the Middle East.

Friday night, Mr. Bob Carey, Vice President for Resettlement and Migration Policy with the International Rescue Committee joined us after the show, speaking of the challenges facing Iraqi refugees seeking to start a new life in the US. While the sheer act of being resettled still remains a slim occurrence for many, new arrivals in the US must deal with an economic recession and an outdated resettlement program.

Saturday’s discussion was a mini-IVAP reunion with IVAP artist Michael Jordan, joining Amikaeyla Gaston and Kim Schultz onstage to relieve the most memorable moments from the trip. Michael Jordan developed our Postcards to the President campaign you see embedded in this post. Intersections goal is to send 2,000 postcards to the president before the end of the year.

The need for action remains pressing. On Sunday as the curtain closed on No Place Called Home, 58 Iraqis were killed and another 75 wounded in a standoff at a Catholic church in Bagdad. Just yesterday another 50 people were killed and 180 wounded in a wave of 14 explosions that rocked Baghdad.  The continuing violence sends new Iraqis into exile and keeps already exiled Iraqis from returning.  And even if conditions on the ground do improve, the trauma experience by many will prohibit them from every returning.

And so, the Iraqis continue to depend on humanitarian aid and resettlement as well as advocacy efforts from people like you. Please take a moment to visit the take action section of No Place Called Home and check out the opportunities to get involved.

Read the full article.

Click here to read the article.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/10/2/907217/-No-Place-Called-HomeTheater-Production-On-Iraqi-Refugee-Stories

http://current.com/entertainment/music/92707917_iraqi-refugee-stories-heard-in-new-york.htm

http://www.playbill.com/news/article/143210-No-Place-Called-Home-An-Iraq-Inspired-Love-Story-to-Premiere-Off-Broadway

http://hoboken.patch.com/articles/iraqi-stories-come-to-hoboken-in-mile-square-theatre-show

http://www.diplomacyandpower.com/?tag=no-place-called-home

Proclaimed as one of the “purest contemporary voices…” by National Public Radio, Amikaeyla Proudfoot Gaston embraces the best of many types of music. Originally from the Washington, DC area, Ami began her musical training at an early age, studying classical piano. Her later training included viola, western and Indian flute, and a multitude of percussion instruments from around the world including tabla, timbale, bata, conga, & djembe.

Ami’s strong interest in ethnomusicology and sacred chanting led her to study with spiritual and musical masters from many different cultures. At the invitation of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, she was invited to perform at the Inaugural Festival of Sacred Chanting and Singing for the commemoration of the Golden Buddha in India. Her organization, the International Cultural Arts & Healing Science Institute (www.icahsi.org), in partnership with government, health, and non-profit organizations, brings together artists of all forms to promote healing and wellness through arts and activism.

Her Music as Medicine – Healing with an Artful Purpose programming has taken her around the world to Cuba, China, Taiwan, Africa, and India to work with at-risk youth and children. She has been to Israel and Palestine helping Palestinian refugees to alleviate the pain and trauma caused by the war through joyful music, dance and drumming. Last fall Ami traveled to Lebanon, Jordan and Syria as part of Intersections’ Iraqi Voices Amplification Project and will share her IVAP experiences with Fred and the audience.

Conversations as Melodies is a program of “Arts at the Intersection,” presented by Intersections International.

Come listen to Ami before she begins performing in No Place Called Home, which opens Oct. 8th.

Conversations as Melodies
Saturday, Oct. 2nd, 5pm-7pm
Intersections International
274 Fifth Ave
New York, NY 10001

For the last two years, I have been working to bring No Place Called Home into the world. The play, based on interviews with hundreds of Iraqi refugees across Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, is an unexpected love story. It tells the true story of an American woman and an Iraqi man, a story about one refugee and 4 million, a story that isn’t supposed to be a love story.

It’s also the fulfillment of a promise. A promise I made to the countless Iraqi refugees I’ve met over the last two years who asked me to tell people about their suffering, to try and help them move on with their lives, to get a new home, a new start and a chance at a real future.

The first time I ever meet an Iraqi was in Lebanon in 2008. My colleague Eduardo Vargas and I had been sent to observe the situation on the ground for Iraqis living in exile. In meeting after meeting, the plea that emerged over and over again was that the Iraqis were stuck in a holding pattern—unable to return, unable to get resettled and unable to put down roots in their host countries—they were languishing in urban cities out of sight (and mind) of the whole world.

After I returned home, I couldn’t get the faces of the people we’d met out of my mind. The young mother whose son had been kidnapped out of her front yard when she’d gone into the house to get him another glass of milk. He was returned three days later, after she paid $5,000 in ransom, but he had been beaten and taught to smoke—four years old. Or the mother of five children whose husband had been missing for months and she still wasn’t sure if he was dead or alive or what to tell the children.

Amid all the cups of tea, the tears and the story-telling, the question that hung heavy in the air was– “what can I expect for my children now?” With no options for legal residency or employment, limited access to education and no end in sight to their situation, the future that these mothers could offer their children was uncertain at best. And yet these women were certainly not giving up on their expectations for their children to have a normal life.

Perhaps the fact that No Place Called Home is ultimately a love story is not so unexpected after all. It was a love for all the people in this world regardless of race, religion, country or creed that motivated this project to begin with. It was a love of the arts and a belief in their power to change the world that motivated eight American artists to spend three weeks soaking in stories of survival, torture, perseverance, heartbreak and pride. And it is the Iraqis love for their children and their continued hopes for a bright future that makes this a story that simply must be told.

Photos by C. Eduardo Vargas, Amikaeyla Gaston and Alissa Everett