I created this project to offer my story of displacement and making home as a portal to the many stories that are out there.

Whether facing down physical threats, hate crimes and bullying, wrestling with institutionalized discrimination and bans, or swimming against the tide of hateful public rhetoric, immigrant and refugee youth, today, are carrying huge burdens.

They urgently need well-designed, culturally resonant content and creative tools to develop expansive definitions of belonging and transformative ideas of how to make America their home.

There is a Portal uses the arts and storytelling for community development in immigrant and refugee serving spaces to activate healing, envision avenues of change, and mobilize leadership.

Our work serves:

There is a Portal is Kayhan Irani's latest multimedia performance and community building project which reimagines belonging, place, and human connection. Using digital storytelling with lush visuals and participatory interactive elements, Irani shares her journey of displacement and the search for home in four parts: Loss, Hate, Regret, and Connection. Sharing memories of the Iranian revolution and ancient family tales of migration, she offers a glimpse into personal and political cycles of displacement, violence, and finding home. Continuous audience engagement is built through digital prompts and aesthetic engagement with the piece. Through immersive digital design, audience members interact with the narrative to weave a web of interconnected stories and histories and unearth the power of our human ties to create new definitions of belonging

VIEW THE TRAILER HERE

(For the best viewing experience, please view the digital trailer on a computer)​

View trailer on mobile phone

Using the pedagogical and learning tools, groups are bound together in a relationship of reciprocal testimony and empathy which starts with the personal and expands to the historical, political, and ancestral. Each group becomes a place where participants can take ownership of their role in making a place for themselves, their communities, and histories while mending the frayed ties that exist.

For the past twenty years I have worked at the intersection of theater, education, and grassroots social engagement. Time and again I have seen these spaces and communities overlooked as ones full of creative potential, that hold the leaders of tomorrow. We need structured, thoughtful, creative models of teaching and learning that create radically transformative space in immigrant and refugee communities.

This is something I wish I had growing up as an immigrant child.

Growing up as an immigrant in a multi-ethnic, working class neighborhood of Queens, there was little space for acknowledging our histories and family stories. We were not taught that immigrant community building was an engine of development. Rather, the push to “achieve” meant letting go of cherished pieces of family history, homeland, and language. I slowly let certain parts of myself melt away. I want to reclaim the precious things we once left behind, and ensure all young people can claim the power and beauty of their heritage.

I wish I had the tools to see and value my people's history and place in the world;

I wish I had the space to encounter other ways of being, other modes of
learning, and the chance to witness other people's stories;

I wish I had a process that helped me come into my own power - outside
the frameworks of domination and subordination, outside notions of
"us/them".

​

The Story:

From the streets of Tehran during the Iranian Revolution to the sidewalks of Manhattan on September 11th, from 10th-century migration tales to the contemporary challenges of living as an immigrant in America, the performance brings to life cycles of oppression over time and space and juxtaposes the personal and political. (View an excerpt here)

The Interaction:

Continuous audience participation is built through digital prompts and aesthetic engagement, but also at multiple moments in the story I ask the viewer to recall moments from their own lives, and sharing a small detail. Those details are then assembled and presented back to the viewer at the end. The audience and I are bound together and when my story ends, yours begins.

The Community Building:

​The piece brings forward a multiplicity of stories. In order to connect and catalyze these stories I am creating a community-building program. The materials and approaches will utilize the principles of social justice education, participatory theatre, reflective writing, and theater for change. Components of the program include:

1. Workshops and a Journey Book for deeper learning and engagement;

2. Facilitator training and support materials to build intentional There is a Portal community groups;

3. A content map for use in building curricula around the piece.

How funds will be used:

• Producing the immersive digital storytelling experience: Video and Sound production: $5,000; User interface design and development and User interactivity and design: $9,000; Back end development: $5,000; Testing and Quality Assurance: $1,000 TOTAL: $20,000
• Creating a framework/training where groups can use the digital experience to its fullest transformative potential - as a launchpad for gathering community and starting important conversations (Ex: sharing best practices of group building; how to hold emergent space; trust-building tools, etc.): $1,500
• Design, production, and printing of a Journey Book – a workbook with art-making and personal reflection prompts to help you write/draw/dance your own story with options for a digital workshop series: $2,000

TOTAL: $25,000

It's time to reconnect to our deepest potential

VIEW THE TRAILER HERE

(For the best viewing experience, please view the digital trailer on a computer)​

Pre-COVID: The work was a live, participatory, one-woman show meant performed in schools, community spaces, and local cultural centers to both immigrant-serving and general audiences. It was creating space for live dialogue, encountering "strangers" through exchanging stories, and building mini-spaces of intimate sharing and healing.

COVID & Beyond: The project pivoted from a live participatory performance to a digital story and community competent pedagogy. When we come out of this pandemic, we will need to encounter each other again, share stories, and speak about the loss even more than before.

In the face of crisis, displacement, and dispossession we must nurture our deepest roots of possibility. Help us meet that need in immigrant communities.

There are sites waiting to implement elements of the project in their programming and ongoing work including:


• a high school that exclusively serve new immigrant youth,
  
• a peace-building and interfaith center at a four-year public college, and
  
• an ESOL college prep program and,
• a Middle East-based teacher training organization


We can no longer ignore the power of the arts and storytelling in learning and community development. Our world desperately needs this!




There is a Portal is a cultural nutrient that lifts up the entire ecosystem of immigrant-serving spaces. From staff to clients, this project will enrich immigrant-serving spaces with custom made storytelling materials that develop community building and civic engagement practices.

Help the project reach tens of thousands of youth and educators throughout the globe to help young people bring out the multitudes they hold within and shape their identities with dignity and joy.




My home is here. My connection to each one of you, that’s my home. If we remember together we can pull the poison out.


Learn and See more at www.thereisaportal.com/overview