Details Set for ANCESTRAL TABLE as Part of 2025/26 Body and Sound Festival
Audiences will experience an evening-length solo performance presented alongside a communal meal retracing the legacies of Mary Prescott’s maternal ancestors.
The LA Phil, Mary Prescott and Liquid Music confirmed program details for Ancestral Table. Part of the 2025/26 Body and Sound Festival presented by LA Phil Insight, Ancestral Table looks to create a communal experience through a shared meal and interdisciplinary performance, encouraging attendees to consider relationships between ecology, migration, cultural inheritance and the maternal legacy of its creator, artist Mary Prescott.
Previously presented as a work-in-progress in October 2025 at Mabou Mines in NYC, Ancestral Table will be presented at Millwick in the Arts District on Thursday, March 19, 2026 at 7pm and Friday, March 20, 2026 at 7pm. Audiences will experience an evening-length solo performance presented alongside a communal meal retracing the legacies of Prescott’s maternal ancestors and their pathways of migration as revealed through foodways. Legendary local chef Jazz Singsanong of Jitlada joins Prescott in preparing the evening’s meal.
The program pairs text from the memoir of Prescott’s mother in ‘sound scores’ against musical selections that exist in dialogue with various Thai musics, video installation and the communal food experience. By organizing attendees into small groups in which they are encouraged to read aloud from the menu and share their reflections on the offerings with other participants, Prescott encourages a communal, embodied engagement with the oft-neglected domestic, private legacies of culture and identity.
Prescott says, “Ancestral Table evokes an embodied experience of everyday Thai life through sense memory and storytelling. By layering woven fragments of time, place and person with taste, smell, sound and sight, I aim to share Thai heritage and connection with the audience, and embrace them with good food, new friends, music, visuals and performance. Food and community are at the center of Thai life, and I want to give the audience an opportunity to experience that at the event.”
Ancestral Table is a co-comission of the LA Phil, Roulette, The Great Northern Festival and National Performance Network in partnership with Liquid Music and American Composers Forum. Development support was provided by Harlem Stage, Mabou Mines, Loghaven Artist Residency and The Bogliasco Foundation.
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