New York or BUST!

Ova and I are packing for our month long stay in New York City! We are excited and nervous. So much to do before we leave town. We will be staying in a loft in Brooklyn where we can also rehearse and write. We want to take what we did at Highways last Sunday and tighten up the script and the performance. We also want to work on the movement which means for the both of us a LOT more exercise and getting in shape. So we plan to workout, rehearse hard and walk all over the city. Why am I nervous, because I sure hope we get an audience! Ova's family is coming all the way from Hawai'i to see the show. And apparently we have family in New York and Vermont! So it looks like we might even get to meet some new Laotian Family members! Hope I get some sleep tonight! - Leilani

Starting the Refugee Nation!

Hello and welcome to Refugee Nation. We have been working on this project since 2005, it's been two years! We started at the 1st International Conference on Lao Studies in DeKalb IL with the help of a grant from the Multi-Arts Produciton Fund/Rockefeller Foundation. At that conference we met Laotian scholars and community organizers from around the country and the world. We then began interviewing Laotian Refugees and their children. We drove form Elgin to Minnapolis St Paul and back to Chicago. We've been to New England, Seattle, Atlanta and all over California talking to Laotians around the country trying to get a better understanding of our community.

Yesterday we did a workshop performance at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica California. Whew! It was scary, we weren't sure we were ready, but we did it! The show is now an hour long. Now we have the core of our show. Over thenext four weeks we will be writing, rehearsing and getting in shape four our New York debut... well, actually it willb e PREVIEW performance. June 22-24, 2007 in NYC (for tickets go to http://www.naatf.org/index.php?page_id=165)

Check out our web page for more info.
http://www.teada.org/refugee-nation.html

Also check out these sites for informaiton, video and a RADIO show on KPFK!

Legacies of War:
http://www.legaciesofwar.org/community-work/refugee-nation-theater

KPFK radio show:
http://64.27.15.184/parchive/mp3/kpfk_070524_070100mr_thur.mp3

YouTube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-7lcuO4zx8&mode=related&search=

If you are Laotian and want to contribute your story, find out more about us, or bringus to your town, email us at refugeenation@gmail.com