“Más que un Pétalo” (MQUP) is a 90-minute interdisciplinary theater show deconstructing the Ecuadorian immigrant experience in the United States. Using theater, dance, textile arts, music and stop-motion, the performance invites audiences to experience the immigrant journey of an Ecuadorian native flower, “Tauzhu Sisa”. The flower, clad in a costume made of skirts hand-sewn by the artist, exposes how colonization and extractivism have affected Ecuadorian lands and Indigenous peoples, ultimately pushing the flower to escape her motherland and expand north. Affected, the flower sheds her petals (skirts) as play on the game “loves me, loves me not.” As each petal is “plucked”, a new word labeling immigrants such as “welcomed” or “not welcomed” is revealed. Eventually, the flower realizes that these labels carry the same weight of being desired and then rejected by a nation and its peoples - a constant emotional rollercoaster. The flower is left to rediscover her worth beyond the “petals”- a symbolic representation of the labels placed on immigrants. The piece takes the audience on a journey of self-acceptance and radical self-love, uplifting immigrant narratives. Past versions of the project included an educational component: arts-based workshops for immigrants.