más que un pétalo

Exponential Festival

The Brick Theater, January 2024

Playwright & Performer: Salomé Egas
Director and Dramaturg: Brynne O’Rourke
Producers: Brynne O’Rourke & Zeynep Akca
Scenic Design: Annie Del Hierro
Music: Julián Velasco
Choreography & Costumes: Salomé Egas
Lighting Design: Hayley Garcia Parnell
Stage Manager: Eulàlia Comas
Assistant Director: Kira Joy Williams
Assistant Stage Manager: Ana Gabriel

Más que un Pétalo (More than a Petal) is a multidisciplinary theatrical experience deconstructing the Ecuadorian immigrant experience in the United States. Using dance, theater, textile arts, music and stop-motion video, the performance invites audiences to see the immigration journey of a taxo flower, “Tauzhu Sisa”, an Ecuadorian native plant.​

The flower, clad in a costume made of skirts hand-sewn by the artist, teaches the audience about her relationship to Ecuador and its land, its native people, colonization and immigration. She eventually sheds her petals (the skirts) as a play on the game “loves me, loves me not.” As each petal is “plucked”, words categorizing immigrants such as “welcomed” or “not welcomed” are revealed. Now petal-less, the flower realizes that these petals carry heavy labels that leave her feeling both desired and rejected by the US and its peoples - a constant emotional rollercoaster. The flower is left to rediscover her worth beyond these labels, her “petals,” a symbolic representation of views held about immigrants. The performance takes the audience on a journey of self-acceptance, radical self-love and immigrant narrative empowerment.​