UPDATE and GREAT news for PULLproject:  https://www.nefa.org/news/announcing-2021-ntp-creation-touring-grant-projects

More on PULLproject's background:  https://pullprojectensemble.com

Latest project:  Tales Of Clamor

PULLproject is an award-winning ensemble based in LA, comprised of aerial artist/actor Kennedy Kabasares and writer/actor traci kato-kiriyama.  In 2015, they were recipients of the Exchange Grant - a national grant award from the Network of Ensemble Theaters.  This supported the development phase of their next show, “Tales of Clamor,” in “exchange” with a principal partner and a new team of artistic collaborators.  

PULLproject was the only ensemble, of all those awarded by NET, to choose a non-arts entity as their principal partner - NCRR (Nikkei for Civil Rights & Redress).  Through the Exchange, PULLproject was entrusted with official use of the CWRIC Hearing video footage by NCRR and Visual Communications.  PULLproject spent innumerable hours with members of NCRR as they dove into an extended period of research, interviews, viewing of Commission Hearing footage, a writing workshop, a show-and-tell session early on in the process, and the involvement of one of their members in writing a first draft of a "Sansei monologue."

In March of 2016, the Exchange grant period culminated in a Staged Reading with in invited audience and many members of NCRR present in the audience.  NCRR was very excited and enthused to see where PULLproject is at in this stage of development for "Tales of Clamor" and, shortly after the reading NCRR member Richard Katsuda expressed, "We want to work with you two forever."

NCRR believes this new and innovative work can help get the message of their work and education about the Commission Hearings (and Redress) to a different and much larger, broader audience.  They hope to present some of this work at the Day Of Remembrance in February of 2017, the 75th Anniversary of the signing of E.O. 9066.

The show:  PULLproject is developing “Tales of Clamor” - a theatrical case-study that examines the sound of silence, the reverberations of a little-known yet major moment of American history, and the universal need for connection & collective noise in today’s landscape.  “Tales of Clamor” utilizes aerial apparatuses, scenes based in the present and past, and rarely scene video footage from the 1981 CWRIC Hearings (Commission of Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians).

Its political texture calls on us to recognize the need for solidarity and the power of a community breaking silence in order to create change.

At its emotional core, this show is about people showing up for each other at a critical moment of individual and collective need.

The narrative anchor of this performance is the duo of traci and Kennedy, who together explore concepts including the science of sound, the Model Minority Myth, and the Commission Hearings that led to Redress in the 1980s.

And this all happens in a circus school. ;)