Cecilia Nadal, the founder and executive director of Gitana Productions, remembers the first time she met Faraja Lungele, a 14-year-old refugee who came to the United States from Kenya after fleeing the Congo. Lungele would repeatedly peek into rehearsals in the basement of St. Louis Public Library’s Carpenter branch in south St. Louis and quickly return upstairs, without saying a word.
After three or four sightings, Nadal pulled Lungele aside, they talked, and she found out that Lungele loved to sing and dance. “Living the Dream” is part of a broader program, Global Education through the Arts, in the non-profit that seeks to pair African-American and immigrant children who live in the same neighborhoods together when there are few other avenues to cross those cultural barriers. The group was able to make arrangements to take her home and Nadal said “she had the biggest smile on her face.” Above that, Lungele came out with the fact she could dance and sing in four languages and wanted to act. To Lungele, “Living the Dream” means “everything.” “I know what Faraja is feeling,” Nadal said. “Those words take her back home, they take her back to her mother, times with her friends at her school. She’s still making the transition and when we go to song, we go to heart and we go to memory. I think it took her back to where she is from and that is what she is missing.” “Growing up in St. Louis, you see a lot of violence in the streets and communities, so to have a play that targets those issues, it makes you feel good inside,” said Johnson. “It is helping me because it is pointing out things in the community that you may just pass over. In one of the scenes, there is a guy who is getting bullied because he is new to the country. It makes you look at your own life and make changes.” There are several more performances of “Living the Dream,” on March 23, March 26, March 30 and April 2. Visit http://www.gitana-inc.org/ for more information. The St. Louis American © March 2016 |
Source: Gitana – Articles