José Torres-Tama's Page

Artist or company name

José Torres-Tama

Please select Artist type. If you are an Artist in Schools or Teacher Artist additional information will be requested upon submission.

Artist

Contact email address.

jose@torrestama.com

Contact phone number.

jose@torrestama.com

Contact physical address (street, city, state, ZIP)

2426 Saint Claude Avenue, New Orleans, LA 70117

Artist or company website

http://www.torrestama.com

Please provide a brief (250 word) biographical sketch of the artist or a history of the company in question. For orchestras, please also include a biography of the conductor. This information will be viewable by the public.

Based in New Orleans, José Torres-Tama tours nationally and internationally with satirical one-man shows that explores the underbelly of the North American Dream mythology, the Latino immigrant experience and New Orleans Creole History. A Louisiana Theater Fellow and NEA award recipient, he received a 2010 Creation Fund award from the National Performance Network for the commissioning of ALIENS, IMMIGRANTS & OTHER EVILDOERS, a sci-fi Latino noir one-man show that satirizes the status of immigrants as "aliens and extraterrestrials". His critically acclaimed post-Katrina performance "The Cone of Uncertainty" chronicles his escape from the flooded city of New Orleans on a stolen school bus three days after the levees breached. His performances thrive on a fusion of spoken word, historical narratives, film projections, and exaggerated characters, creating spectacles that are visually dynamic and politically provocative. His performances have been presented in England, Wales, Poland, Slovenia, Mexico, and extensively across the United States. Nationally, his shows have been presented by Performance Space 122 and Theater for the New City in New York; GALA Hispanic Theatre in Washington, DC; The National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque; and the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans. Academic institutions such as Cornell, Duke, LSU, Vanderbilt University, the University of Michigan and the University of Maryland have presented his solos, theater/performance workshops and multimedia lectures. He is a contributing commentator to NPR’s Latino USA, a weekly news journal, and since 2006, his post-Katrina commentaries have explored the many challenges of the reconstruction and the lives of Latino immigrant workers who contributed to rebuilding New Orleans.

Please cut and paste quotes from reviews and other publicity. If none, please indicate.

Powerful performance art piece lets audience feel mistreatment of Hispanic immigrants ... Torres-Tama's moving and visually stimulating piece holds a mirror --both literally and figuratively -- up to the audience.
--Times-Picayune

An adroit performer and lucid writer, Jose Torres-Tama bravely takes us to the dark side where most dare not go. --DC Theatre Scene

José Torres-Tama treads that dangerously vague turf of performance art gracefully... with dexterity and daring. --The Village Voice (New York)

…like the best performance artists, Torres-Tama seduces his audiences through humor and the ability to portray disparate characters. --Theatre Journal

At his best, Torres-Tama commands the stage with his vigor, conviction and theatricality. --The Houston Chronicle

Torres-Tama is both a versatile writer who can be lyrically evocative as well as bitingly humorous, and an impressive performer. --The Philadelphia Inquirer

Torres-Tama is a diversely talented performer. He can switch accents in the space of a syllable, emote humor or existential pain in the blink of an eye, recite Shakespeare and rap in the length of a breath. --The Anchorage Daily News

Please summarize the activities for touring or school activities.

RESIDENCY ACTIVITIES: LECTURES & WORKSHOP NARRATIVES

Performance Art as a Tool for Social Change:
Through this multimedia performed analysis, which transforms the traditional lecture into a “live art” experience, the role of the performance artist as a social provocateur is explored. The artist discusses performance art practices as creative strategies that aspire to initiate dialogue concerning issues of race, gender, gentrification, homelessness, and the AIDS crisis. Torres-Tama cites the work of performance artists who have focused a creative eye on the difficult issues affecting our national communities, and audiences are encouraged to participate in a discussion of art that dares to cross into political territory as a tool for social change. (This is a forty-five minute presentation with an additional 15 minutes for discussion. Technical needs include a MAC computer connection for a Power Point presentation, large white screen, DVD projector, Audio CD player, and a podium with a microphone.)

Exploring the Personal to Comment on the Political in Performance:
Through this interactive workshop, the artist investigates the usage of autobiographical material as subject matter to explore larger issues concerning race, religion, gender, and personal politics within performance. The personal story is discussed as an imprint of a particular place in time, as part of an oral tradition, and as a catalyst for healing, for one's particular experience will always have universal resonance. The student or community participants are led through a series of text and movement exercises designed to create a nurturing space for the sharing of the personal experience. Techniques that exemplify creative invention and aesthetic choices are discussed. (This workshop can last from two to three hours, or more if necessary. It is best housed in a theater or performance space.)

Techniques for Performance Art / The Multidisciplinary Arsenal:
Through this dramatic arts workshop, the artist engages the participating students in an interactive exchange exploring creative strategies such as movement, improvisation, visual rituals, conceptual activity, incantations and multiple voices used in hybrid performance practices. Also, the “creative arsenal” of film, recorded narratives/music, and projections to develop multidisciplinary work is explored. The workshop can last from one to three hours, depending on class period. Students are encouraged to bring in monologues, poems, or conceptual ideas to develop in the workshop process. (Suited for a theater/performance space.)

What is Performance Art?
The point of departure for this presentation is the artist’s personal description of “performance art as a bastard child of a drunken one-night stand between theatre and the visual arts.” Its practitioners often employ video/film, live action, visual tableaus, spoken word/poetry, dance, and conceptual movement, making it the most inclusive of art forms. Thus, it is the most difficult of genres to categorize, and it is this characteristic that naturally makes it the most misunderstood and demonized form by the media and the general public. The artist makes a case for performance art as the most important genre of the latter 20th Century and the new millennium. (45 min. program with Power Point projections, DVD film and audio needs.)

Torres-Tama’s multimedia performance lectures and interactive workshops have been presented at Cornell, Duke, Rutgers, University of Michigan, Ohio State University, University of Maryland, Roehampton University in London, the Bluecoat Arts Centre in Liverpool, and the Centre for Performance Research in Aberystwyth, Wales.

Jose’s hybrid genre practices cover the academic terrains of theater and performance, visual arts and new media, poetry and spoken word, and politics and social commentary.

Do you provide a Teacher's Guide?

No

Please provide the details of your technical rider. Indicate where you have flexibility.

My performances have been designed to be performed in state of the art theater facilities with numerous instruments and multimedia elements, and they can be performed as "unplugged" spoken word performances in more modest facilities, lecture halls, community spaces and classrooms.

Required to give a dollar fee range. Please indicate your range with concise descriptions of activities at the upper and lower ends of the scale

A residency that includes three performances, a lecture and two workshops, is $6,000.00

A residency that includes two performances and two to three activities, lecture and workshops, is $5,500.00

A residency that includes two performances is $5,000.00

A residency that includes one performance and one or two activities, lecture and workshop is $4,000.00*
*Any additional residency activities are $500.00

A single performance is $3,500.00

A single multimedia lecture or performance reading
$1,500.00

A single theater workshop is
$500.00

All stage productions are followed by a thirty-minute question and answer session with the artist, unless otherwise requested by the presenter.