“Violence, Ritual, and Space”: Aleshea Harris in Conversation with Julie Vatain-Corfdir and Jaine Chemmachery
Abstract
Harris is a two-time MacDowell Fellow and has enjoyed residencies at the Hermitage Artist Retreat, Hedgebrook, and Djerassi. Harris's work is highly poetic and political. She reinvigorates ritualistic performance, community building, and meta-theatrical explorations of the stage, thanks to a chiseled script. Her attention to sound, body, and movements offers a singular and plural address to debunk simplistic social constructs on Blackness in the United States. In Is God Is, Harris breaks the mythological molds of Greek dramaturgy (among many other matrixes) by sending twin sisters from the South on a quest for revenge. Harris creates a vibrant contemporary Black American theater that illuminates the complexity and thorniness of being represented beyond realism. Her work is transformational in ways that make Blackness infinite in its possibilities on stage.
Domains
Humanities and Social SciencesOrigin | Publication funded by an institution |
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