Dwelling: an Immersive Performance Event at q-Staff Theatre
Happened as a one-night-only immersive performance event created
collaboratively by a group of local artists as part of an international project exploring themes of
home and belonging.
Born out of an intensive week-long group collaboration, Dwelling asked: What, who, where is
home, and why is it that way? “Home is one of those words that gets thrown around a lot,” said
Tara Khozein, one of the project’s co-leaders, “but we are often thinking of completely different
things when we say it. Some people think of a building, others think of a feeling, others think of
a person. It makes us ask ourselves where we come from and what makes us feel safe.”
The performance featured contributions from an interdisciplinary group of local artists and
educators including: Diana Delgado, Marisa DeMarco, Esther Elia, Kat Kinnick, Mariel Leon
Lazcano, Zahra Marwan, Aziza Murray, Hope Orange, Graham Parker Ransell, Rich Van
Schouwen, Nick Tauro, and Sandy Timmerman.
Over a week of collective work, the artists created pieces individually and collaboratively that
emerged from these themes including: How do you create home; leaving home: travel &
migration; eviction, statelessness, and deportation; chosen home, chosen family, and banding
together; who makes you feel at home; being a stranger in a society; sanctuary
Dwelling is a project under the leadership of New Mexico-raised classical singer and theater
artist Tara Khozein and Hungarian director Martin Boross of Promenade: Albuquerque.
Boross shared a more personal perspective: “In the past years, my personal and political definitions of
home have become less stable. As someone who’s had to leave my home country, Hungary, and
as an artist who often works with people who live in precarity, the question of what makes a
place feel like home has become urgent.”
The performance was presented in collaboration with q-Staff Theatre, where the artists invited the
public to dwell on what it is we call home.
