Home
A collaboration between Cessali Fournier and myself, the performance/installation Home interwove many aspects of trauma and healing within the context of domestic/family life. Although informed by the past, this show took place in the immediate presence. Home became a living space for healing.
The private became public as the audience witnessed us continue our work of processing, releasing, and soothing. The space also offered moments of participation to facilitate healing of the visitors, or simply to hold their introspective experience in a sense of peace and community.
More documentations and in-depth descriptions can be found at the website for the What is Home project.
Racy
Directed by Bonny McDonald and Cessali Fournier, Racy was about the visibility of race and racism. A cast of 8 of us spent months thinking, writing, and talking about our personal relationship to race. Based on specific racial themes and stereotypes, we sought to physically embody our responses. We workshopped these static body images, forming a consensus of 8 powerful visual statements. These became a type of vernacular and foundation for the performance.
Speaking with the body turned out to be a highly successful means of communicating, as we found out in many of the nightly talk backs. After each show, the audience was invited to have an open conversation about the show or the issues surrounding it. Many people shared that they were reading our body images in a way that resonated with our originally intended meanings, or with new meanings that they connected to.
Sacred Waste
Sacred Waste was directed by Bonny McDonald. It was an induction ritual orchestrated by the Plastic Shamans, worshipers of plastic in all its manifestations…from the high priestess Dasani to the swirling patch of trash in the Atlantic the size of Texas. Throughout the ritual, the shamans shared different examples of devastation to the Earth through this material, the source of their spiritual elation, and promised similar epiphanies of progress and convenience.
Wish
Wish was an improvisational and collaborative performance between sound artist Hal Lambert and myself. Using our respective mediums of video and noise, we were feeling our way towards harmony within the video-soundscape, hoping for a way into ecstatic immersion. The audience and artists created a shared meditation on the shifting nature of relationships between time, place, and individual. Click here to see video footage of the show.
Jaclyn Rawls 