Fleeing loss, finding home: Palestinian play, Hmong and Somali choral works take center stage
By Myah Goff,
23 days ago
In the Twin Cities art scene this weekend, choral performances in Hmong, Somali, Haitian Creole and more celebrate immigrant experiences, while a new play at Mixed Blood Theatre tells the story of a young Palestinian woman navigating displacement in the 1960s. Meanwhile, the Weisman Art Museum showcases Kara Walker’s striking silhouettes, confronting the exclusion of Black narratives in Civil War history.
Multilingual choral concert offers a musical exploration of immigration
The Boston Choral Ensemble , in collaboration with Minneapolis Choir Co-Op , presents “My Journey, Yours,” a multilingual concert featuring works by immigrant composers and writers. The program, which premiered in Boston earlier this year, highlights immigrant experiences through choral music.
Boston Choral Ensemble’s Artistic Director Katherine Chan , who is originally from Hong Kong, said the concert is tailored to reflect the experiences of diverse immigrant populations as it tours across the country. She noted that the choir’s 40 singers are learning and performing songs in multiple languages, including Haitian Creole, Hmong, Somali, Tamil, Vietnamese, and Spanish.
“They are really feeling the hardship of learning these languages, just as immigrants have to adapt to new languages in a new country,” Chan said.
Among the works is “La Frontera” (The Border) by composer Judith Shatin , a piece that sets music to a poem written by an undocumented youth held in an American maximum-security detention center. Another is composer Melissa Dunphy’s “N-400 Erasure Songs,” which reshapes text from the U.S. citizenship application form to explore the emotional toll of the immigration process.
“The piece follows the words that many immigrants face when applying for citizenship — rejection and delay,” Chan said. “You are told ‘No’ so many times and then, at the end, the piece says, ‘You are the best of us.’ It’s that feeling of finally fitting in, that sigh of relief that many of us have experienced.”
“Finding a Home” by Sydney Guillaume , performed in both English and Haitian Creole, examines the pain of feeling out of place, while also celebrating the idea of finding and creating new homes.
“My favorite part is when it says, ‘Home isn’t confined to a place,’” Chan said. “It resonates so deeply because home can be anywhere we choose, without giving up the old one.”
“We are all connected to these stories because we all know someone who is an immigrant — whether it be family, friends, or neighbors,” Chan said. “This program celebrates those stories, whether they reflect hardship or joy.”
Date: Saturday, September 28, and Sunday, September 29
Time: 6 p.m. on Saturday; 2 p.m. on Sunday.
Location: Saturday’s concert will be held at Minnehaha United Methodist Church, 3701 E. 50th St., Minneapolis. Sunday’s concert takes place at Central Presbyterian Church, 500 Cedar St., St. Paul.
Cost: General admission is $20, with discounted rates of $15 for students and seniors, and $10 for children. Pay-what-you-can tickets are also available.
Play tackles themes of Palestinian identity and displacement
The Mixed Blood Theatre , in collaboration with New Arab American Theater Works is premiering “Rosette,” a play by Palestinian American playwright William Nour. The production tells the coming-of-age story of a young Palestinian Christian woman grappling with identity and loss in the wake of Al-Nakba (“catastrophe” in Arabic), which marks the displacement of 750,000 Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war .
While Nour began developing the play in 2019, its themes resonate deeply in the context of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, which has led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands and killed more than 40,000 people in Gaza since the Hamas attack on October 7, which killed more than 1,300 Israelis.
Through the character of Rosette, a 16-year-old Palestinian refugee living in Haifa in 1966, Nour aims to challenge prevailing narratives by portraying her struggles with family separation and her quest for identity.
Date: Through October 6.
Time: 7:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. 2 p.m. on Sunday.
Location: Mixed Blood Theatre, 1501 S. 4th St., Minneapolis
Walker’s collection addresses historical stereotypes of African American identity. Through her use of silhouettes, she challenges perceptions of Black bodies by portraying them in exaggerated, grotesque forms — such as the “mammy” caricature and the hypersexualized “Jezebel.” Her technique, rooted in 18th- and 19th-century portraiture, reduces these figures to outlines, stripping away detail and complexity.
“This is a major concern of hers, a major tool of hers to think about how race relations from the time of slavery in the United States to today are fueled by the idea that African Americans were evolutionary different,” said Diane Mullin , senior curator at the Weisman, at the press preview.
Walker’s silhouettes are overlaid onto Homer’s engravings from his Harper’s Weekly Civil War illustrations, visually disrupting the original scenes to highlight historical omissions and ongoing realities of racial oppression in the United States.
Time: Opening reception on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Regular gallery hours are from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Wednesday. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Thursday and Friday. 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.
Location: Weisman Art Museum, 333 E. River Pkwy., Minneapolis
Get updates delivered to you daily. Free and customizable.
It’s essential to note our commitment to transparency:
Our Terms of Use acknowledge that our services may not always be error-free, and our Community Standards emphasize our discretion in enforcing policies. As a platform hosting over 100,000 pieces of content published daily, we cannot pre-vet content, but we strive to foster a dynamic environment for free expression and robust discourse through safety guardrails of human and AI moderation.