AFROFEMONONOMY/Work The Roots Announces Inaugural Programming

Performance Space New York, with co-production partner New Georges, announces details surrounding AFROFEMONONOMY // WORK THE ROOTS, a group activation of Black femme theater artists in celebration of each other.

Since March 2021, collaborators within AFROFEMONONOMY-including Lileana Blain-Cruz, Charlotte Brathwaite, Eisa Davis, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Ayesha Jordan, Joie Lee, April Matthis, Jennifer Harrison Newman, Okwui Okpokwasili, Stacey Karen Robinson, and Kaneza Schaal-have been meeting in informal in-person and remote gatherings to explore Kathleen Collins' 1984 quartet of unproduced one-acts Begin the Beguine and Eisa Davis' musical performance work The Essentialisn't.

Resonating throughout both works are questions of societal strains on Black women's physical and mental health as well as concomitant expectations of performance-questions the group engages through their own model of care and liberation.

In a snapshot of this continuing, generative process, AFROFEMONONOMY will join in a global reverberation this spring of Kathleen Collins' texts in responsive visions-with performance, music, film, radio-across New York City and in Oakland, California, with works made in Norway and Senegal, and online.

The late Kathleen Collins, a visionary writer, director, and professor with a prodigious output of films, plays, screenplays, novels, and short stories, died of breast cancer at the early age of 46. Her premature death, mirroring those of other Black women writers such as Audre Lorde and June Jordan, begs the question of Black women's endangered health. Eisa Davis met Collins' daughter, Nina-who has ensured her mother's legacy for generations to come by securing distribution for Collins''' breakthrough feature film Losing Ground, and by editing and publishing two books of Collins' writing-when Davis performed excerpts of Collins' short stories. As they strategized about how to bring Begin The Beguine to life, Davis organized a reading through The New Black Fest at the Lark-then brought the project to the artists of AFROFEMONONOMY.

Begin the Beguine joins together four one-acts, each of which will be presented outdoors by AFROFEMONONOMY collaborators in locations across New York City, as well as in Oakland by Oakland Theater Project, in a synchronized world premiere.

The first, Remembrance (part of Downtown Live, presented by the Downtown Alliance in association with En Garde Arts and The Tank), features performances by Eisa Davis and Kaneza Schaal, with Jackie Sibblies Drury as the project's directorial consultant. It will take place in an arcade adjacent to the Stone Street Historic District (85 Broad Street) in Manhattan on May 16 at 6:30pm, May 22 at 1:30pm and 4pm & May 23 at 4pm (tickets available at https://ci.ovationtix.com/35658/production/1046061).

The Reading will come alive in the Courtyard at 122CC, the building housing Performance Space, May 15, 16, 22 & 23 at 2:30pm and 3:45pm, with a live offering created by Lileana Blain-Cruz, Amelia Workman, Kara Young, Gabby Beans and Jennifer Harrison Newman (tickets available at www.performancespacenewyork.org/shows/work-the-roots).

All New York performance offerings are free, with donations collected for the Black Women's Health Imperative. And in California, the Oakland Theater Project will present the entire series of one acts (co-directed by Dawn L. Troupe and Michael Socrates Moran) together as a drive-in theater production, May 15-July 3.