Phoenix Festival Playbill 2025 (1) - Flipbook - Page 30
UNWELCOME GUESTS
A new work by Emotions Physical Theatre
Choreographed by Shawn Rawls
Cast
A TYLER BRUNSON
OMARI CONSTASTE
DE ANDRE COUSLEY
RASHA GUERRIER
AJ GUEVARA
MARIA PELLEGRINO
Show Description:
In Unwelcome Guests, choreographer Shawn Rawls dives into the emotional
landscape of growing up as the dark-skinned stepchild in a light-skinned
family. Through a fusion of contemporary dance, physical theatre, and
psychological storytelling rooted in Internal Family Systems (IFS), this work
confronts the parts of ourselves we’re taught to silence.
Each dancer embodies a different “part” of a single person—The Protector,
The Performer, The Judge, The Exile, and others—manifesting the inner
voices shaped by colorism, family rejection, and cultural survival. Drawing
from the theory of double consciousness, the work moves between outward
performance and inward rupture, exposing how identity is both masked and
fractured in spaces where we’re told we don’t belong.
Unwelcome Guests is raw, intimate, and unapologetically honest—a kinetic
portrait of internal healing, collective memory, and the act of naming what was
once denied.
