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A magic realism-inflected play that follows a family on a journey back toward Chile from Canada, and offers an external representation of the inner turmoil of exile.
About the author
Carmen Aguirre is an award-winning theatre artist and author who has written and co-written over twenty-five plays, including
Chile Con Carne,
The Refugee Hotel,
The Trigger,
Blue Box,
Broken Tailbone, and
Anywhere but Here, as well as the #1 national bestseller
Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter (winner of CBC Canada Reads 2012), and its bestselling sequel,
Mexican Hooker #1 and My Other Roles Since the Revolution.
Carmen is currently writing an adaptation of Euripides's
Medea for Vancouver's Rumble Theatre, and Molière's
The Learned Ladies for Toronto's Factory Theatre. She is a Core Artist at Electric Company Theatre, a co-founding member of the Canadian Latinx Theatre Artist Coalition (CALTAC), and has over eighty film, TV, and stage acting credits, including her award-winning lead role in the Canadian premiere of Stephen Adley Guirgis's
The Motherfucker with the Hat, and her Leo-nominated lead performance in the independent feature film
Bella Ciao! She is a graduate of Studio 58. carmenaguirre.ca
Summary
Anywhere but Here is an external representation of the inner turmoil of exile. Using magic realism tropes, it follows a family on a journey back toward Chile from Canada. They drive in a convertible along the desert border between the U.S. and Mexico, each with different emotions about the North they are leaving and the South they are approaching, reversing their refugee flight, refusing the state of exile. The father and his two young daughters encounter an increasingly fantastic range of characters. They are encircled by past, present, and future in a collective vision that takes them, and the audience, into the compelling experiences of people crossing and guarding the border. Threaded through the external journey is the internal search for home in an unstable world. With the arrival of the mother of the family, they confront the costs of exile and the true nature of home.
Additional text
"Defying both time and space, with raps written by Shad Kabango, Aguirre crosses borders, literally, emotionally, and metaphysically... Anywhere But Here creates empathy around immigration with effective storytelling."
—the Vancouver Arts Review
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