The show’s text blends poetry and prose, exploring, as characters traverse four hundred years of history, dropping references to slavery, lynching, mass incarceration, and police brutality. It is a major undertaking that Port Cities NYC pulls off beautifully. All in a thirty-five minute run time. Port Cities couldn’t have come at a more appropriate time in American history. We are more ready for it now than we ever have been. Claire Tighe FULL SOURCE CULTUREBOT
It's not every day you board a boat in order to get to the theatre. And it isn't every play the includes a gorgeous view of the Statue of Liberty in the price of the ticket...Port Cities NYC captivates through its dreamy exploration of compelling historical subject matter. Rachel Kerry FULL SOURCE A Ferry Ride into the past, New York Theatre Review
MAY NYC THEATER REVIEW: KENTUCKY, DEAR EVAN HANSEN, STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, DAPHNE’S DIVE, THIS TIME & PORT CITIES FULL SOURCE MAXAMOO
Port Cities NYC holds a mirror up to the history of New York City, highlighting the economic and social systems of oppression that still haunt public consciousness FULL SOURCE: QuickTheatre This kick-off of this global multimedia performance art project was a big success, with great press coverage and interesting talk-back sessions for a more in-depth understanding of the Dutch colonial history in New York. FULL SOURCE: DutchCulture
IN OTHER WORDS Argentina & Australia
There are no monsters, just human beings capable of monstrosities… Diego Braude FULL SOURCE Imaginación Atrapada A sharp cry, an empty space where pain takes its form and transmits through time. This play, that is a work of art and a cry that remembers…....She seems peaceful, smiles when she speaks and her voice seems as if it doesn´t have the strength necessary for the subject matter. But she does… In Other words, another way of giving form to the violence and remembering through art things that must not be forgotten and must never be allowed to happen again. Never again. Jose Luis Ferrero FULL SOURCE ObservadorGlobal.comSource page 1 page 2, page 3
When the performance ends, the applause invades the space and the lights are turned up, those words remain exposed to be read, now part of the space and piercing with their gaze. The spectators slowly go closer, but little by little they lose their shyness and explore the immensity of the space, the perfect place to perform a piece with these characteristics that pays tribute to alternative theatre. Laura Gilardenghi FULL SOURCE abccultural Source
Chalef infuses this performance with a movement vocabulary that oscillates between quiet stillness and violent tremolo allowing us to comprehend the poetry of trauma, as well as the trauma itself. Tony Reck FULL SOURCE Beyond Words, Realtime
Surreal fragmented worlds collide with real places in Talya Chalef's latest production... Darren Levin FULL SOURCE Dealing with Shared History, Arts Beat, Australian Jewish News.
Stories begin, merge into others’ stories, disappear and re-emerge in another form. At times it is a slow, mesmerizing dance, at other times rapid-fire and confrontational. It is the kind of meaningful site-specific work both in terms of its content and style that I think is so important, integrating the human being into what can be a quite sterile new-media/installation form. It is both theatrical and political. Liz Jones – Artistic director, La Mama Theatre, Melbourne
...congrats on ‘in other words’. I found the work took me on a journey that was very special. The piece wraps and encapsulates people in a space that they then importantly take images of the work with them. Days after, the words, dialogue and images return and play with your thoughts and the issues- it was very powerful. Jill Morgan – Executive Officer Multicultural Arts Victoria
Audience comments
The story, the image, what is said, what is lived, we need to speak about this but words alone, without images, don't transmit everything. I feel that you were there and that these stories are also yours. Carolina Restauro
Thank you for this kind of theatre. In my opinion, theatre is not entertainment; it is an obligation and a social action. Remembering is an uncomfortable but fundamental exercise for the identity of all humans. Thank you for coming to Argentina to show us your art. Anonymous
Beautiful.. and painful.. terrible and latent memories...soft and profound images.. congratulations! Florencia Firpo
EYTON RD Australia & South Africa
... incredibly precise, painstakingly crafted in terms of the minutia of bodily movement and visual stimulation, meticulously scripted, often sparking literary nuggets of great power and impact, but also very quiet, very still, cognizant of the overflowing of silence and dead space as the body, mind and soul gets caught in the liminal sites between places, between times, between desires, resigned to always be en route… Edgar Pieterse, University of Cape Town FULL SOURCE An incomplete and unresolved meditation on Infecting the City
…a profoundly moving work about loss, memory & displacement... Staged in the intimate Distrix Hall on the outskirts of District Six, Eyton Rd is haunted by the melancholic memories of forced removals and displacement that have robbed people& their communities - both here in South Africa and across the world - of their sense of place. FULL SOURCE A Road Less Travelled
...intricately weaved into a menagerie of stained glass, woodcarvings and longing for places visited and unvisited." FULL SOURCE page 1 page 2 Melbourne Arts Hub: Melynda Woodward, February 06,
For performance artist Talya Chalef, 2008 was an eye opening experience. The 29 year old went on an odyssey of sorts to Eastern Europe and South Africa, where she grew up, in an effort to retrace the steps of her family, most of who were Holocaust survivors. Adam Kamien FULL SOURCE - Everything is in its place
Set in Melbourne's old city Watch House amid iron doors and blue stone walls, this one woman performance uses sound & light to take the audience on a trip through a haunted history. FULL SOURCE Bold Trek uncovers a city's old haunts
Talya's performance projection is a broader mapping of the ways former lives inhabit the contemporary moment and trouble progressive agendas, such as urban renewal. site thus gains a texture and richness as it travels for it juxtaposes stories of one place onto and through the spaces of other societies. Dr Karen Till FULL SOURCE Artistic and activist memory-work: Approaching place-based practice