IN EXILE CLOSE TO THE EQUATOR is a verbal and visual performance collage that moves at channel-surfing speed and combines personal stories, conceptual movement, and a dizzying array of voices from exaggerated personae to explore the Latino immigrant experience, rites-of-passage in urban culture and the continuous search for the "American Dream." While his point of departure is the mythology of the personal journey and the effects of migration upon one's identity, Torres Tama touches upon such universal themes as the struggle to remain in light or be absorbed by the dark side and whether to wage one's battle with the pen or the sword. In the process, he delivers "In Exile" with the intensity of an urban warrior and moves rapidly from poetic drama to the hilariously absurd--continuously breaking the wall between performer and audience.

What Critics have said about Jose's work:

Jose Torres Tama treads that dangerously vague turf of performance art gracefully... He takes Latino life on a magical mystery tour with dexterity and daring. ---The Village Voice (New York)

Torres Tama is both a versatile writer who can be lyrically evocative as well as bitingly humorous, and an impressive performer. ---The Philadelphia Inquirer

IN EXILE premiered at Pregones Theatre in New York in 2000 and had a run at the famed Nuyorican Poet's Cafe in the summer of 2002. Across the country, it has been presented at colleges and centers such as the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA; Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge; State College of New York at Geneseo; The New Genre Festival in Tulsa, OK; , The Walker's Point Center for the Arts in Milwaukee, WI; Jump-Start Performance Company in San Antonio, TX; the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans; The Center for Cultural Exchange in Portland ,ME; and Taller Puertorriqueño in Philadelphia.