Following my son’s lead, I get to see things from below. Because of that, my vision is growing.
The Sun
My son is about to celebrate his first year on earth
I am shepherding a new life as I steer toward a new paradigm.
My family went into lockdown on Friday the 13th of March. In these two and a half weeks I’ve reached the conclusion that no matter how grumpy I get, the sun won’t stop shining. Sounds funny, but I’ve caught myself on a number of occasions grumbling about the sunny clear skies. Why won’t my surroundings mirror and comfort me exactly as I need them to? I see the buds bursting on the trees outside — spring flowers aren’t subject to our regulations nor do they bend to our desires.
I’m grateful to have become a mother this year. As a support my son to grow into his fullest self, to explore the world and make room for him to do so safely (who knew everything in my living room was a hazard to a small life?) I am pulled back from the thoughts of terror and uncertainty to the concrete and real. To watch him, all joy and pulsing life, I am witness to the cyclical nature of everything. Beginning, Middle, and End. The earth won’t stop turning toward the sun no matter how much we exert ourselves and create worlds that defy nature. My son won’t stop growing and dreaming because he can’t play outdoors.
During the huge shifts we are undergoing each one of us will inevitably face our inner voice - both the unconscious, unhealthy patterns of thought as well as the higher self.
Which one will you listen to? Which one will you breath life into?
My latest one-woman show and community building project, There is a Portal will continue. I am convening a fabulous pedagogical and community engagement team and in the fall, we will work across 5 freshmen seminar courses at Queens College to create networks of belonging across race/class/gender and across campus. How might a new student see their world and the possibilities it holds if welcomed into their educational journey through participatory storytelling, deep listening, and personal-political explorations of history? I’m eager for the question to unfold.
In 2003 I created a one-woman show to raise awareness and repair the damage that had been wrought in so many lives after 9/11. I’m pasting the text of my artist’s statement below. Just replace COVID 19 with 9/11.
Image by Gazelle Samizay
Whether it’s man-made crisis or natural rhythms, we are offered the opportunity to try again.
To move in a new way in order to create a new story.
We are being pulled through a portal toward the unknown.
We are being shown what is possible if we all move together - in the direction of healing and hope.
With love,
Kayhan
On the Verge
Passages
New American Stories
Home Making
2019 Begins Again
\Back
& /Forth
I’m expecting this turn around the wheel to be completely new and utterly familiar. As I move forward, I draw from my rich well of experience in theater and storytelling for social change!
What are you expecting in 2019?
Photos by Aidan Un, Presented by Intercultural Journeys, 2018.
Directed by: Rania Lee Khalil, Video Art: Gazelle Samizay, Musician/Composer: Alex Shaw
There is a Portal is growing. Thank you to all the partners who helped develop the work and to audiences who engaged with the interactive dialogue.
Now that folks have said “WE WANT THIS” I am building up the foundation so we can offer it to educational and community spaces that serve immigrant/refugee/diaspora youth. We want this to be a vehicle for youth to create and share their own stories and build spaces of belonging.
Contact me to support this effort.
"There Is A Portal is so profound in its vulnerability, its honesty, its way of opening up and out into the community of witnesses." - Audience Member
"Thank you for a wonderful and inspiring performance. It means a lot to me as someone with American/diaspora stories I hold in my body." - Audience Member
"I hope you have the opportunity to share this with the world. I love how the audience is invited to be so present and inside the experience." - Audience Member
Upcoming Events
February 23-24
Two-day Forum Theater Workshop: Explore the technique of Forum Theater.
Participants will learn the basic skills needed to create, perform and lead the Forum Theater format for use in their respective communities. We will explore our bodies as a tool of representing feelings, ideas, and relationships and explore collective solutions to everyday problems.
5th Annual Women’s Conference
March 4, 2019
11:00am, Panel discussion: Teaching As Activism
BMCC Main Campus
November Shows + Workshops
I'll be performing my new one-woman show, There is a Portal, in Philly and NYC November 9 and November 29th. I'd love to see all your beautiful faces in the house! Please invite friends and family.
Fall Keeps Moving
Looking Ahead
Around and In: Making New Work, Connecting with the Past
Halfway to Spring
Back on Stage
Plan, Work, Fall
Celebrating Spring
It's the day after Noruz, Persian New Year, celebrated by people all over West and South Asia and the diaspora. Here in NYC, I finally got my fire going after the blizzard and so many regressive changes since January put a freeze on things.
This is what's making me hopeful and what I'll be working on for the next stretch of time:
Art: Stedroy Cleghorne
The Path Home: multimedia story project bringing out voices of immigrants who got a pathway to citizenship during our nation's first and only legalization program in 1986.
We're creating a public engagement format to use the video in a dynamically structured setting where audience members can enter into a conversation with the stories of the past.
Want to see this come alive? We need support to fully build the model, test it with our community partners, and take it on the road. Contact me if you can help.
Photo: Marisol Diaz at Pepatian's Bronx Artist Showcase
Dialogue. We need it, lots of it. Reach out if there are ways I can help you structure, design, or facilitate community dialogues on pressing issues. Every group, organization, and space can do this. With a little attention and help you can grow beautiful new community connections.
Painting: Aliza Nisenbaum, on exhibit at Whitney Biennial
Myself and a group of Immigrant heritage women are creating a series of home learning circles to build mutual support networks for immigrant and refugee rights. We need help to get this off the ground. If you are interested, we'd love to hear from you.
May warmth and tenderness enter the little spaces inside you and heal what hurts.
May those spaces sprout flowers for the new day.
Back from the White House & Cambridge. Fall in NYC
After the whirlwind of fabulousness in D.C. I joined the team of the Anna Deavere Smith Pipeline Project to support the production of Notes from the Field: Doing Time in Education!!
It is an extremely powerful and extraordinarily timely performance. Urgent and inspiring, it depicts the personal accounts of students, parents, teachers and administrators caught in America’s school-to-prison pipeline. Investigating a justice system that pushes minors from poor communities out of the classroom and into incarceration.
Kayhan Goes to the White House
On Wednesday, May 4th the White House is celebrating Asian American and Pacific Islander Artists and Storytellers who've "used unique channels and diverse platforms to tell powerful stories, increase awareness around key AAPI issues, and encourage diversity and inclusion in all sectors of society."
Guess who's going to D.C. next week?!
Monday, April 18, 2016
On Monday, April 18, while SCOTUS hears oral arguments in the case against immigration action, I'll moderate a discussion celebrating our undocumented heritage -- and launch my new project - Documented cIRCA 86: Immigration Reform Turns Thirty!
Spring Brings New Things
My newest project, Documented cIRCA 86: Immigration Reform Turns Thirty (cIRCA '86) is an oral history and multimedia public engagement project that celebrates the lives and accomplishments of immigrants who were legalized through the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986.
