The Romanian Cultural Institute & Red Monkey Theater Group Present a Free Staged Reading of Scenes from Newly-Published EXILE IS MY HOME Collection

The Romanian Cultural Institute, in co-production with Red Monkey Theater Group, the world premiere of "Exile Is My Home", a free showcase of scenes based on four plays by award-wining feminist author and educator Domnica Rădulescu, one of the most accomplished Romanian-American writers. Hailed as "breath-taking in their imaginative scope" (Christine Evans) and written with brilliant skill and wild imagination, Domnica's irreverent and utterly original examination of immigration is brought to the stage by an energetic artistic ensemble helmed by director Rachel Tamarin.

The showcase will be presented within RCI's "Romanian American Studio Theater" program on April 8 - RSVP to reserve a FREE ticket HERE

with a rerun, as part of the "Rehearsal for Truth" Festival, at the Bohemian National Hall on April 11 - RSVP to reserve a FREE ticket HERE.

Both performances will be followed by talkbacks with Domnica Rădulescu and Rachel Tamarin.

"The beautiful and welcoming theatrical spaces of the Romanian Cultural Institute and of the Bohemian National Hall in New York are perfect locations for the showcase premiere of four of my plays gathered in the volume Exile Is My Home. Four Plays by Domnica Rădulescu and I couldn't be more thrilled about these productions. As a creative artist who arrived in the United States in the eighties as a political refugee from the then Communist dictatorship of Romania, my plays emerge largely from my experience of and obsession with the immigrant experience, loss, dislocation, uprooting, re-rooting, as well as genocidal wars, all while portraying these experiences from the perspective of empowered and complex female characters and through the lens of modern feminisms. Unfortunately, these themes and their treatment are now even more relevant given the present war in Ukraine and the general state of the world. I am particularly grateful to the brilliant director Rachel Tamarin for undertaking the difficult task of directing scenes from not one, not two but fours different plays and for her deep understanding of the universes created in these plays, for her visual and visceral directorial vision that matches my own in a very harmonious way. And of course I am grateful to all the wonderful actors and crew members who are bringing to life these strange universes." - Domnica Rădulescu, author

"In each play in this collection, Domnica Radulescu has created a fantastical, imaginative universe, each so different, yet astutely and insightfully capturing the challenges and triumphs faced by immigrants and refugees. I firmly believe that an artist's greatest responsibility is to cultivate empathy and a deeper understanding of the human experience within their work, and Domnica's plays provide our cast and creative team with the opportunity to fulfill this goal, in abundance. The absurdist nature of the plays and the larger-than-life characters Domnica has created for us offer the cast and me endless opportunities to push our creative boundaries and to break out of our comfort zones. Considering the war in Ukraine and the violence that the United States continues to perpetrate against immigrants, particularly Latin American immigrants, seeking refuge within our country's borders, these stories are sadly even more relevant than when they were first written, and more important than ever to tell. I am so incredibly grateful to Domnica for trusting me with her amazing scripts, and for offering our cast and creative team this incredible opportunity for play and for artistic growth. I hope to honor her and our audiences at the Romanian Cultural Institute and Bohemian National Hall as we breathe life into these beautiful and deeply compelling stories." - Rachel Tamarin, director

PERFORMANCE DETAILS:

EXILE IS MY HOME. FOUR PLAYS BY DOMNICA RĂDULESCU

Directed by Rachel Tamarin

With: Steph Marie Alvarez, Jessica Carmona, Alexandra Gomez Selina Hernandez, Talia Segal, Kenneth LaBoy Vasquez

Choreography: Amy Frey

Music: Joshua Murphy with additional music by Alexander Tanson

Stage Management: Mikaela Blanchard

Lighting Design: John Silberger

Light and Sound Operation: Benjamin Tamarin

Language: English

Not suitable for children under 16.

The showcase features the following plays:

Exile Is My Home. A sci-fi Immigrant Fairy Tale

"Told as a sci-fi, post-apocalyptic fairy tale, Exile Is My Home is the haunting story of Mina and Lina, a refugee couple from the Balkans traveling through the galaxy in search of a planet to call home. The play combines absurdist comedy, irony, and suspense to raise consciousness about the current international refugee crisis and the complexity of issues related to it. As millions of people are uprooted from their homes and swept across tumultuous seas and often unwelcome lands, Exile Is My Home highlights the importance of immigrant theater in bringing awareness about many of the challenges facing our world today." - New York Theater Review, May 7, 2016

The Town with Very Nice People. A Strident Immigrant Operetta

In the words of award winning Australian American playwright Christine Evans, the play is a "scathingly satirical comedy-of-manners" whose flamboyant heroine Roxana, a Romanian writer living in a small southern bigoted town, attempts to recreate the town into a space of diversity and tolerance. "In The Town with Very Nice People. A Strident Immigrant Operetta, Radulescu dares to critique feminism as a religion which shames other feminists who do not follow the party line. Again, there is this sense of a hugely individual voice and great intelligence that refuses the binary, the simplistic and the politically correct." - Julia Pascal

House in a Boat with Food and No God

A dystopian ecofeminist play that takes place on water and whose characters, the mother daughter pair Nermina and Sinistra, struggle for survival as well as attempt to reinvent the world by piecing together the massacred body of the original Goddess, mother of the universe. "In House in a Boat with Food and No God. A Nomadic Dystopia on Water [Rădulescu] creates a scenography that is on and under water. It is cartoon-like in its playful toying with the grotesque. A parthenogenetic child is a tomato or a potato and therefore food is always present. A woman has a hundred vaginas because God, 'a racist, atheist and a vampire pig' has killed so many children and she must make up the loss." - Julia Pascal

Crossings: A Play of Immigrant Voices

A play dedicated to those who cross borders every day, to those who survive and persist, to those who have perished and continue to perish in their strenuous crossings. "Crossings: A Play of Immigrant Voices showcases a different register of Rădulescu's voice. Her outsider's eye, empathy and rage at injustice are channeled into an artful polyphony, drawn from interviews with immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras who now live and work in Virginia. Rădulescu orchestrates their border narratives of terror, love, loss, and reinvention into a bilingual choreo-poem that retains the specificity of each voice, while creating resonance between them through the interwoven elements of narration and chorus." - Christine Evans

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