SOLIDARITY IN STORYTELLING: OPEN MIC NIGHT
We at Living Hyphen are a community made up of people from diasporas from all around the world, as well as Indigenous people from many nations. We sit with the entangled fact that all of our histories and our present-day realities are similarly bound up in colonization, imperialism, military occupations, and racist immigration policies in our homelands and right here on Turtle Island. Today we continue to see the violence and harm stemming from these systems of oppression. We have been watching that violence on full blast on our screens for the last five months to Palestinians in Gaza. While our mainstream media does not cover these stories in full, we know that this violence has also been unfolding and continues to unfold in Sudan, to Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, in Ukraine, to Uyghurs in China, and so many more places and people around the world.
We understand the interconnectedness of both our struggles and our liberation. Together, we speak truth to power. We gathered our community together for an evening of storytelling in solidarity for our shared liberation!
When: Thursday, April 4 at 7-9 p.m.
Where: The Theatre Centre Café/Bar on 1115 Queen St. West.
We invited our attendees to come prepared with a 5(ish) minute story to share with our community. We randomly selected storytellers to take the stage to speak their stories. All levels of experience and works-in-progress are warmly welcomed!
We strive to cultivate a supportive space for courageous and tender storytelling and to bear witness to each other’s lived experiences in all their complexity.
While this is a free event, we are encouraging our attendees to consider donating to the Toronto Community Justice Fund to support community members who are facing legal and financial repercussions stemming from the criminalization of their Palestinian liberation and solidarity work. As writers, artists, and storytellers, we at Living Hyphen know how important it is to speak out against injustice and we affirm our right to do so.
Our Performers
Micha Edwards
Micha Edwards is an artist, an Ontario community changemaker, the community manager at Reset Toronto, and a powerful performer! The Happie practice, invented by Micha, combines healing and art, exploring themes of freedom, joy, and liberation. Micha writes and crafts innovative sonic stories and guides eating meditations in likkle Jamaica, inspiring a #FOOD4JOY culture.
Camilo Consuelo Ezperanza
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Thơ Nguyễn
Thơ Nguyễn (she/they) is a humxn being who is exploring self-liberation and shared liberation in community and through reconnecting with their creative inner child. Their social anxiety taught them that being in community would bring out their unique quirks, delicious home cooking, and phenomenal bathroom singing prowess. Ngọc Thơ might have been a gem of a poet in their previous life (as their name hints at: ngọc = gem, thơ = poetry) but in the present moment of this lifetime, Thơ is simply looking for joy and hope in playing with words and putting them together in a way that surprises, consoles and provokes, akin to the whimsical exploration of a child.
Antu Hossain
Antu (she/her) is a first-generation Bangladeshi Canadian storyteller, a budding photojournalist and pizza enthusiast. Her theater debut was in middle school plays, and since then she has taken the stage at Montreal's Confabulation storytelling platform, often sharing stories of the rollercoaster ride that is the human experience. She dabbles in healthcare reform by day with a passion for advancing women's health innovation.
Maria Patricia Abuel
Maria Patricia Abuel (she/they) is a Toronto/Tkarón:to born and raised Filipinx interdisciplinary artist, community worker, and arts and culture educator and administrator. Patricia is the Program Manager of KAPISANAN Philippine Centre for Arts and Culture. She co-founded habi habi po, a non-profit collective of Toronto-based Filipino/a/x artists focusing on building community through traditional textile art practices to preserve Philippine cultural heritage and revive ancestral connections.
Alicia Richins
Alicia Richins is a poet and cartographer to new worlds. This proud Trinbagonian-Canadian works as a climate justice consultant-facilitator who supports the learning journey of communities and organizations in unearthing the interconnections between systems, peoples, species and issues to chart pathways to climate just and resilient futures.
Explore the Performances
ABOUT THE THEATRE CENTRE
The Theatre Centre is a nationally recognized live-arts incubator and community hub. Their mission is to offer a home for creative, cultural, and social interactions to invent the future.
They make work that spans disciplines and genres; work that pushes the boundaries of what is considered “art”. The Theatre Centre’s programming and role as a community space are inextricably linked. Art is not made in a silo: it is connected to the world around it.
They also offer one of the only spaces in the neighbourhood where folks can pop in for a coffee, spend the day working, or just hang out (no purchase necessary). It is a community hub and a place to gather; a place where you — regardless of class, race, ethnicity, religion, or ability — are welcome to be. You don’t have to identify as an artist or performer to use the space. They want you to feel at home in their space.
We are grateful to The Theatre Centre for so generously donating their space with us so that we can speak our stories out loud in solidarity across racial and religious lines.