Decent Structures Arts
Workshops consist of:
These workshops are inspired by the community work that helped raise me, help many folks to find their way, and supported me to build my work.
In 1-2 hour workshops that are held at community centers and safe, accessible spaces, we will have intergenerational BIPOC folks meet, discuss, and be empowered through their own expression. I facilitate through questions that we use from the studio's creative practice into a communal space. I'll first ask questions from the work:
What are the films you can remember and what did they offer to you?
If you could be any role, who would you be?
Is there space for you? How are you or we seen?
How would you change that?
This will form into writing and then discussion. These writings can form a live archive. As we exchange ideas, challenge ideas, talk aloud and from our histories we can find self-determination, collective power, and processing.
Lastly, we will release into one expression. This could be learning tools for the camera to become the documentarians ourselves, so that our stories and archives can be continued from our lens. This may be with sound either in bringing our voices together in song, riff, and rhyme; or in with a surrounding sound bath. And lastly, we have the option of using movement as a way to find breath and release.
HOW:
The goal is to have these workshops throughout the creative process and along the tours of the performances. I want to bring this work to my communities, and the communities who can relate to these erased stories. How can we extend beyond the "exclusive" theater or artistic spaces that aren't fully accessible? Like a film or music, can performance reach farther, locally and intimately?
I hope to hold these workshops during my creative process, at B.A.A.D, Watermill Residency Center for the Arts, and Weeksville Heritage Center between Fall 2023-Winter 2024. These workshops continue along tour sites including ODC Theater and in NC potentially partnering with Black on Black Project, EmancipateNC, and Stagville Plantation. My goals are to connect, inspire self-determination, and to create spaces for healing and radical imagination. I choose to connect directly with these communities through accessible centers in areas where predominantly BIPOC folks live. I aim to build a first point of contact extending to Theater spaces, in which hopefully they can see themselves reflected in the work. I am researching spaces in New Orleans, Montgomery, AL at the Legacy Museum, Atlanta, and BANFF in San Francisco.
Our work together influences the expansiveness and consideration of my piece, and consequently, our impact. I’ve held a workshop at The University of Maryland through Blacklight Summit. I facilitated our discussion questioning: How do we dream? What we think is possible for ourselves? What is our power? This formed conversation, writings, and witnessing our full selves in portraiture.
C O M M U N I T Y
Elements of the work important for theater
Put Away the Fire, dear will be an evening-length work approximately 75-90 minutes with
intermission. We will utilize set design pieces like house furniture, portable walls or divider like
structures, and possibly grand features like fabrics or stepping structures. There may be video
projections with the live performances to transport us to many worlds. The entrance or lobby
of the space will be transformed as a portal into the performance with hanging visuals and
writings and props that bring us into the world of the piece.
Audio Possibilities:
I am experimenting with live performance of one musician. I also would love to explore channels
of audio creating proximity and distance in surround sound and the direction of sound.
Audience Orientation: I’m experimenting with the placement of the audience on 3 sides of the
piece, 2 sides, and/or traditional proscenium orientation. I’m also interested with the proximity of
the audience to have options to come closer or through the space at certain points in the
performance.
I’m interested also in immersive spaces to create a performance in which the audience walks
through the space and discovers these scenes at various perspectives.