Ifrah Mansour’s one-woman play “How to Have Fun in a Civil War” comes to Ritsche Auditorium April 13.
Mansour will present this captivating refugee story of resilience at 7:30 p.m. April 13 in Ritsche Auditorium. Admission is $10 for adults and free for children and those with a St. Cloud State ID.
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In the play, Mansour revisits her childhood memories of the 1991 Somali Civil War as she explores war from an idyllic viewpoint of a 7-year-old girl. The performance layers poetry, puppetry, video and multiple narratives from community interviews to confront the violent history of war with humor and healing. She performed the play Feb. 24-March 11 at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.
Mansour is a Somali, refugee, Muslim and multimedia artist living in Minnesota. She explores trauma through the eyes of children to uncover the resiliency of black people, Muslims and refugees. Her first national museum exhibit “Can I Touch It” is part of the “I am Somali” exhibit on view through May 27 at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
Her upcoming works include the “Flying Refugees” installation at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum and the play “Finding Fatima” through Twin-Cities Public Television.
Mansour is also doing residencies and performances in Minneapolis and Mankato through a Building Bridges: Arts, Culture and Identity program, the Midnimo partnership. St. Cloud State University is a part of the partnership together with The Cedar Cultural Center, Augsburg College, The Paramount Center for the Arts and Minnesota State University, Mankato Department of Music Performance Studies. The partnership earned a $500,000 grant from the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, which is supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art.
The program is designed to build knowledge and appreciation for arts and culture with roots in Muslim majority societies.
