Duriel Harris' THINGIFICATION Makes NYC Debut at the 11th Annual Fresh Fruit Festival, Now thru 7/20

Tonight, July 18 and Saturday, July 20, 2013, playwright, Duriel E. Harris will present two performances of "Thingification" at the 11th Annual Fresh Fruit Festival - "New York City's grassroots, disciplinary international festival of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer arts and culture."

Harris' one-woman show combines poetry, performance, music and dance to invigorate audiences with the transformative energy of embodied word-sound and power. "Thingification", features characters that expand from the personae of an original series of performance poems called "Phaneric Displays" (nos. 1-5). The show includes published works from Drag (Elixir Press) and Amnesiac: Poems (Sheep Meadow Press), and original music.

The play opens with Elle, a pop singer who interrogates the constructed idea of blackness and sexuality by exploring notions of gender, femininity and sexual desire and ends with an electrifying celebration of life and love that frees your mind and sets your spirit ablaze! Following Funkadelic's timely directive ("Free your mind... and your ass will follow"), character after character, scene after scene, "Thingification" transforms trauma into transcendence and challenges the way we define difference. Set in various public and private spaces-an intimate urban music venue, the porch of a Deep South plantation mansion, a townhouse's garden apartment bedroom, a hole-in-the-wall tavern, a dimly lit tenement kitchen, a gay dance club in an industrial district-Harris' play transports audiences through time and space by enacting their collective ritual participation in the struggle against "Thingification"-the annihilating objectifying force at the core of all oppressions.

Duriel E. Harris is the author of two print collections: Drag and Amnesiac and a sound compilation "Black Magic" (forthcoming from Asian Improv Records). A poet, performer, sound artist and scholar, Harris co-founded the Black Took Collective. With Scott Rankin, she is co-author of the poetry video Speleology (2011), a jury selection of the 2011 International Literary Film Festival, the 2012 Zebra Poetry Film Festival (Berlin), and the 2012 Visible Verse Festival (Vancouver). Selections from Thingification have been featured in performance at the Babylon Theatre (Berlin, Germany), the MCA (Chicago), The Blue Note (Poznan, Poland), and The Luggage Store Gallery (San Francisco).

"Thingification" shows how true expression elevates, educates, and entertains like no stereotype can. Come celebrate the art of signifying tonight, July 18th and Saturday, July 20, 2013, at the 11th Annual Fresh Fruit Festival in New York.