Annual New England Conference on Multicultural Education (NECME)
Program Overview

* Special Performance *

A CONVERSATION WITH ALANA:

 ONE BOY'S MULTICULTURAL RITE OF PASSAGE

written and performed by
Carlos E. Cortés

Director -- Bethany Kraemer
 Theatrical Consultant -- Dawn Davies

"A Conversation with Alana" is a new one-hour, one-person autobiographical play written and performed by Carlos E. Cortés, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California, Riverside.  In his play, Cortés presents his story of growing up as a young man of mixed ancestry in racially segregated, religiously divided early post-World War II Kansas City, Missouri.  The son of a Mexican Catholic immigrant father and an American-born Jewish mother, whose parents came from Austria and Ukraine, Cortés had to learn to navigate Kansas City's rigid racial, ethnic, and religious fault lines, while simultaneously dealing with the internal conflicts of his own divided family.