I am a text-maker, performance enabler and teacher. I make projects out of people, language, space and time. I often start with questions: how does technology affect the ways we remember? How do we perform power, and who gets to play which roles? Can the person who made you who you are, be the person who messed you up, be the person you forgive now? My work sometimes starts as performance and then becomes maps, walks, instructions, books, curricula and other instruments.
I am currently obsessed with how systems we are steeped in are reflected in the ways we treat each other or behave. How do the power dynamics of a government meeting show themselves at a family dinner table? How does the rhetoric of tour guide or teacher play out in other relationships? A lot of my work has been about placing frames around these behaviors, systems and relationships.
Some of my work is co-authored with community members over long periods of time; some is developed through ongoing relationships with other artists; all of it honors collaboration as a driving force.Â
Shout out to collaborators! They currently include: artists include Clarinda Mac Low, Ogemdi Ude, Kulturanova, Tiffany Zorrilla, Jahomorei Snipes, Tylor Diaz, Mallory Catlett, Jess Barbagallo, Erika Chong Shuch, Flako Jimenez and April Matthis. Venue partners include Abrons Arts Center, Kulturanova, The Chocolate Factory, and many others.
Current and recent projects include: Perfect City, a 20-year art and activism working group created with New York City residents, urban planners and social justice organizers; the libretto for Igor Silva’s Follow, commissioned by Gaudeamus; Language Reversal, a four-country collaboration about oligarchy and translation; Night Keeper, an immersive solo performance about insomnia as a superpower and Empathy School/Love Story, a diptych of monologues about landscape, nostalgia, memory and class (NY Times and Time Out New York Critics’ Pick);
I have writing out now in Longleaf Review, River Teeth, Evergreen Review and Hinterland (UK). My first book, co-authored with Mallory Catlett, called The City We Make Together will be published by the University of Iowa Press in 2022.
I am a PATHS Social Practice Artist-in-Residence at Abrons Arts Center, and a Visiting Associate Professor and Belknap Humanities Fellow at Princeton, as well as a recent finalist for the Alpert Award and the Yale Drama Series. My recent awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Princeton Arts Fellowship, a three-year ASU Gammage Residency, and a residency at Loghaven. My work has been supported by The NEFA National Theater Project, MAP Fund, NPN, Jerome Foundation, Rubin Foundation and the NEA. I have performed with Elevator Repair Service in the work of many artists.
From 2012-2014, I worked on the participatory performance City Council Meeting, created with Mallory Catlett and Jim Findlay, in five US cities. I’ve had additional commissioned and presented by The Foundry Theatre, DiverseWorks, The Chocolate Factory, PS122 and other venues.