Aliens, Immigrants & Other Evildoers Up Next In DESTINOS

Aliens, Immigrants & Other Evildoers, a sci-fi Latino noir solo show about the anti-immigrant hysteria gripping the "United States of Amnesia," created by and starring performance artist José Torres-Tama, will receive its Midwest debut later this week as part of Destinos, 3rd Chicago International Latino Theater Festival.

This newest Destinos presentation is certainly and suddenly timely, considering just last week, the Chicago Latino Theater Alliance (CLATA), producer of Destinos, was forced to cancel a production from Mexico City after U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services arbitrarily denied touring visas to the company, claiming their show about Maya culture was not culturally unique enough.

Exposing this very hypocrisy of a "freedom loving" nation that dehumanizes immigrants while readily exploiting their labor is at the heart of Aliens, Immigrants & Other Evildoers.

Visually dynamic, profoundly moving and provocatively funny, New Orleans-based performance artist Torres-Tama takes the immigration issue head on with a genre-bending multimedia performance informed by film projections, personal stories and poetic texts. The work is inspired by interviews of immigrants who crossed the border to escape economic despair and war, and confronts a system that seduces Americans to embrace forgetting their country's hypocrisies. As Torres-Tama shape-shifts into a variety of voices that humanize a people in search of a dream, he puts a heart and face on today's persecuted immigrant.

Aliens, Immigrants & Other Evildoers will be performed just two times, Saturday and Sunday, October 5 and 6 at 7 p.m., at the National Museum of Mexican Art, 1852 W. 19th St. in Pilsen. The production is presented in English with sprinkles of Spanish.

Tickets are just $20; $15 for students and seniors. For tickets and information, visit clata.org/destinos-aliens, or call (312) 631-3112. Do not wait, as these performances will sell out.

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