Taxilandia (MAP 2019)

ABOUT THE GRANT

ABOUT THE PROJECT

Taxilandia is created and written by Modesto ‘Flako’ Jimenez and directed by William Burke. Taxilandia is a site-specific play-within-a-tour of a city. Audience members become passengers on a dramatic reunion with Flako’s neighborhood of Bushwick, Brooklyn. Taxilandia is inspired and drawn from Flako’s nine years driving a taxicab and his documentation of conversations with passengers, residents, natives, and immigrants to the neighborhood. Being a cab driver was a front row seat to the gentrification happening in Bushwick. He saw and heard from all sides from the transient “gentrifier” to the displaced locals.

Taxilandia immerses its audience in the flavors, sounds, sights and dynamic history of a neighborhood confronting social stigmas and the realities of gentrification. Weaving a dramatic, performative ‘tapestry’ that interconnects generations, social classes, races and cultures, Taxilandia complicates our notion of what it means to be a native, an immigrant or a resident of a place, challenging us to answer: “What is my personal roadmap of home?”


ARTISTIC TEAM

William Burke

Modesto ‘Flako’ Jimenez

Jane Jung

Kevin Torres