Yelba Zoe McCourt’s solo play, titled WHERE Y’ALL FROM?, is a captivating exploration of identity, culture, and the immigrant experience. In this 75-minute solo play, Yelba Zoe embodies the characters of the people she meets, growing up and into adulthood, who ask her where she is from. She portrays an alter-ego version of herself, “Zoe”, the daughter of two Latine immigrants, who navigates what it means to assimilate and become American. From meeting the real-life Big Bird and thinking that her “Sesame Street” worldview is possible, to growing up to live in a world where brown children at the border are put in cages, Zoe attempts to reconcile the dissonance of her childhood dreams and her reality of being an American woman. When a viral video of a baby girl being separated from her mother at the southern border moves her, Zoe is inspired to find out how exactly it was that her own brown family was able to immigrate to America. Zoe re-visits events in her own, and her parents’ life at the intersection of race, identity, and the American Dream. Does identity end at the border? Is she more Latina or American, as one fellow student pushes her to answer. She wrestles with racism, colorism, and being seen as “other.” Using her grit and cast of supportive characters she may be able to reframe what it means to be an America woman.
Directed by Jessica Lynn Johnson, WHERE Y’ALL FROM? invites viewers to join Yelba Zoe on this powerful journey. Having been featured as a staged reading at the Joshua Tree Solo Festival 2023, Yelba Zoe McCourt’s recently fully produced performance at SOLOFEST 2024 continues to resonate with audiences, inviting them to reflect on their own stories and connections to heritage.
Learn More at yelbazoe.blogspot.com/p/all-about-where-yall-from.html
