iMigrant Woman, a play in three beats, brought to you from seven cities and three continents

NEW YORK - July 21, 2020 - PRLog -- iMigrant Woman, written originally in Italian by Valentina Acava Mmaka, and directed by Nora Armani in her own English translation, will be presented on Zoom for two performances only, July 25 & 26, at 2:00 PM (EDT). Q&As with the playwright, director and cast will follow.

16 years after it was first published and staged, iMigrant Woman still speaks to our time, and connects people around the world in more than one way. "Three women, four stories are portrayed by five actresses, each from a different city, much like the characters in the play. The cast members hail from London, Chicago, Louisville KY, Los Angeles, and Princeton NJ. Ms. Acava Mmaka lives in Kenya, and I live in New York. Such an international cast for a stage production would not have been imaginable before the lockdown legitimized this form of online performances." Says director Nora Armani.

"16 years ago was when I first met Nora Armani and I'm delighted she is directing my work and producing it today when the problem of migration has not been resolved in over a generation," says Valentina Acava Mmaka. "We often misuse language when it comes to imagining a society where everyone should feel represented. Words like integration, minority, or assimilation do not lead to a democratic egalitarian or inclusive society. Instead, they help create subgroups that politicians use to leverage power through control." To resolve this ambiguity, Acava Mmaka suggests using the word inclusion instead, and allowing its natural process to take place. "Inclusion means representation and full participation, it means creating the possibility to access the countless opportunities that otherness, through all its forms and manifestations, generates." She explains.

The work explores two important facets of the immigrant experience:  time and space through language. Language defines identity as a process in the making, where multiplicity and diversity become the foundation stones of who we are.

"The struggle the characters in iMigrant Woman undergo," says Acava Mmaka, "is not just the need to be recognized as part of the diverse, mobile, circular and liquid world, but to recognize and reaffirm themselves within the space and time they moved from and came into. They claim ownership of their stories despite the biases, exclusion, and oppression imposed upon them."

Following the successful online streaming of its seventh annual edition with a slate of 38 films, SR Socially Relevant™Film Festival NY organizes new interim events as part of its effort to promote socially relevant™work through different media. iMigrant Woman is the first such event, as a play performance. A retrospective of films under the banner SR for Black Voices from the festival's seven past editions in solidarity of Black Lives Matter, follows.

For information and tickets click here. Suggested donation $10. To donate more, or pay what you can, go to the 'Donation' button in the ticket link.