Ofrenda Reviews

Chicago Reader- Highly Recommended

"...There's an earnest sweetness to many of these tales-one girl celebrating her first hijab with ice cream in Damascus, another feeding chickens in the Ecuadoran countryside-but pain, loss, alienation, and injustice keep them from being stories "for" children. And yet the persistent conversion of loss into art, the hope it engenders, and the beauty that results is a powerful lesson at any age. The performers dance together, sing together, protest together. A bombed city becomes a landscape drawing unfurling across the stage. For theater as activism, you couldn't ask for more."

Picture This Post- Recommended

"...Ofrenda, a new work devised by Albany Park Theatre Project's youth ensemble and written by Isaac Gomez, offers audiences a kaleidoscopic look into the ways immigrants grapple with ideas of belonging and the notion of home. Powerful in its authenticity--the majority of the ensemble are first or second generation immigrants from countries throughout the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the Pacific Islands--the play provides an urgent call for empathy amidst a news cycle dominated by attempts to strengthen borders and other-ize immigrants."