No Strangers Here Today - Press
One-woman Show Evokes Abolition Era
Susan Banyas' "No Strangers Here Today" Details the Underground Railroad
"Her method is fitting for material that turns on the power of individual consciousness. She's not quite alone onstage: Musician David Ornette Cherry, switching between a keyboard and an Apple laptop, provides spare piano meditations reminiscent of Harold Budd, beat-enhanced African chants and other atmospheric accompaniment. But the focus is on Banyas, who combines gesture, dance and a text woven from personal recollection, historical research and the fascinating coded language of her great-great grandmother's antebellum diary... Sometimes her movements are inscrutable, but never enough so to derail the fascinating story she has to tell... It's a stirring portrait of abolitionist effort, and illuminating morally and historically."
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- Marty Hughley, Oregonian
Pastry Pie Crust & Cherry Chocolate Topping
"This documentary delivery of fact was surprisingly effective, expertly performed, and should, I would argue, become an essential contribution to North American self-understanding... Banyas has created something of rare importance here and Cherry's soundscape contribution is worth the ticket price on its own."
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- Zaph Mann, Nonstarvingartists.com
The Poetic Logic of 'No Strangers'
"Her performances are highly personal, they rely more on poetic than narrative logic, and they cross a lot of disciplines. They're about dance, certainly, as her days with SO&SO&SO&SO attest. They're highly visual. Storytelling is part of the mix, and so is music. All of which is to say that whenever Banyas unveils a new project, it's bound to be idiosyncratic and interesting... She also has excellent collaborators, including David Ornette Cherry, the Los Angeles world jazz musician who wrote and performs the music; movement director Gregg Bielemeier; and vocal director Gwynne Allyn Warner."
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- Bob Hicks, Oregonian
A Quiet, Powerful Story of Liberation
""No Strangers Here Today," a collaboration between Portland performance artist Susan Banyas and jazz musician David Ornett Cherry, is storytelling at its purest and most powerful. Banyas' narrative, punctuated by gesture and movement, traces the story of Elizabeth Conard Edwards, Banyas' great-great grandmother, who helped fugitive slaves flee to Canada during the Civil War. Cherry's music quietly, yet movingly, frames the tale of one Quaker woman's contribution to the "Underground Railroad," a hallowed chapter in American history."
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- Rick Seifert, The Red Electric
Forebear's Diary a Springboard for Search for the Truth
"They say every human life contributes to history, but along the way most of those stories are lost. Portlander Susan Banyas, for example, grew up in the southern Ohio county her family settled in the 1830s . . . and never realized her great-great grandparents, on a farm just a few miles from Susan's childhood home, had sheltered former slaves escaping from the South on the Underground Railroad. This weekend in Portland, Susan brings that history back to life, in a performance piece called "No Strangers Here Today," based on her great-great-grandmother's diary accounts of life on that hardscrabble farm, a link on the fugitive escape route over 140 years ago. Like her ancestors, Susan is collaborating with an African American, Los Angeles musician David Ornette Cherry, to bring to life the story of those who worked and traveled on the Underground Railroad. They've been working on the collaboration for a year. Susan wrote the script and created the movement. David wrote the music, based on his jazz and world music roots."
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- Margie Boulé, Oregonian