Performances – Antoinette Ellis-Williams, Chelsea Flowers, Alexis Alleyne-Caputo

  • Date: February 17, 2022
  • Time: 3:30 pm—5:00 pm
  • Location: SHINE Portrait Studio
  • Speakers
    • Alexis Alleyne-Caputo – New York University (Alumna), Goddard College (Alumna) University of Miami (Professor : 2014 - 2017), New World School of the Arts/Miami Dade College: (2010 - 2015)
    • Antoinette Ellis-Williams – New Jersey City University, Women's & Gender Studies
    • Chelsea Flowers, Assistant Professor – Parson School of Design

  • Moderator/s

Antoinette Ellis-Williams

Monologues from Scarf Diaries: Reimagining Ethnicity, Gender, Sexuality and Political Identity

Scarf Diaries is a one-woman play consisting of vignettes/monologues telling the stories of life, written, and performed by Antoinette Ellis-Williams. Scarves serve as visual conduits of the complex narratives of religion, culture, sexuality, work, childbirth, social justice, mourning, abuse, sickness, beauty, and choices. They mark rites of passage in public ways. Women wrap, drape, cover, hide and adorned themselves with scarves throughout the world. For some women they are symbols of private convents, pain, shame, secrets, or ugliness and for others they are declarations of independence, joy, or tributes of honor. If scarves could tell our stories they would speak of these truths. 

The play Scarf Diaries was written in 2014 evolves over time to adapt to current day politics and culture. The play was first performed in 2015 in Jersey City then in 2017 it played to two sold out shows at New Jersey Performing Arts Center. In June of 2021 Scarf Diaries performed at Abrons Arts Centre Off-Broadway’s reg. e. gaines Downtown Urban Arts Festival. Scarf Diaries won Best Play.

Description of Performance & Discussion

The play uses mimicry, comedy, role play and code shifting to voice the concerns of women. I will perform monologues of three characters to help deconstruct message and form: Blessing Ojoko, Dr. Donna and Sexy Lezzy. Scene 5 “Blessing, Our Daughters—The Sky is Big”. Blessing Ojoko is a Nigerian Auntie of a girl taken by Boko Haram while at school. Her narrative is framed around the global important work of educating girls and gender expectations. While Blessing laments are specific, they are familiar to all black and brown women. Scene 7: Donna, Pink Powder Woman seeks to shed light on a Trump supporter with humor. Dr. Donna an upper-class fundamentalist Christian, divorced mother puts us at ease to see and hear off putting things surrounding a politically divisive and painful era. This character gives the audience permission to think outside the box and disrupts the expected stereotypes of Trump supporters. We all know black folks who support Trump, but we are not able to speak out loud about this reality. Finally, Scene 8: Jesse, “Sexy Lezzy”is the counterpoint to Dr. Donna. Sexy Lezzy is a gay artist with undocumented migrant parents and five siblings. Sexy Lezzy challenges immigration policies and still finds humor to come out to her parents. Lezzy hates Trump and all he stands for. She is loud and in your face. She forces Latinx conversation on sexuality which we don’t often see in diverse spaces. 

I will perform each character (not to exceed fifteen minutes) and then lead a conversation about the artist choices I made as well as the subject matters presented by each character. 

Hierarchies: Oral and Visual Testimonies

Alexis Alleyne-Caputo

Responding to the Black Portraiture[s] conference related to the role of “play” in past and contemporary African Diasporic art, performance, liberation struggles, and cultural work, this proposal is to present three (3) five (5) minute performance excerpts from three distinct interdisciplinary projects (poetry, performance, dance and visual) from Afro Diaries™.  

Afro Diaries is a collection of work by, for, and about women of color, and offers a window into the landscape of miscarriages women endure.  The iterations reflect and refract critical issues of identity, cultural differences, human rights, and draws from myriad issues and concerns that create conflict and inequality in society.

Project I:  HIERARCHIES: Visual and Oral Testimonies 

Through projected photography, collage and live performance, HIERARCHIES: Visual and Oral Testimonies positions ‘a black woman’ at the ‘top’ of a hierarchy; an imaginary game/play.

The performance (dance accompanied with poetry/spoken word) serves as the speaking voice juxtaposed to the image(s).  There are a total of three images.

Hierarchies: Abandoned

Hierarchies: Rising from Ruins

Hierarchies: Ascension

Project II: P L A Y I N G: Between Lines and Squares

Noting the inference in Black Portraiture[s] conference summary, i.e., play can be liberating as in racial masquerades;  P L A Y I N G: Between Lines and Squares directly responds to colonial frameworks that require fence straddling on what precisely is labor and leisure (work and play). Thus, what manifests is a tension filled visual and physical examination between oppression and emancipation, vacillating between the metaphorical labor of  ‘reading between the lines’ and the undertones and inferences’ of confinement, i.e, always being or ‘feeling’ boxed in even while at play.

Project III: Labor, Love and Liberation 

Expanding on the labor required to contextualize and experience ‘emancipation’, it must be said,  it is inherently ingrained in the African-American psyche to fight for, love on ourselves and each other as we seek to be liberated and to experience liberation.  Alas, play is aligned with liberation. 

Chelsea Flowers

Can we build communities through Play? In my performance proposal for Black Portraitures, I want to answer this question through engaging in play with the audience. I have created a trivia style game that wants to test your social, cultural, and emotional knowledge. By questioning “What day did Beyonce turn Black? Can you walk like an Egyptian? Would Bill and Hilary Clinton be invited to the cookout?” It also wants to know “do you know the age of mortality of Black Trans women?” It’s not just about Black culture or pop culture, It’s about American culture and how we all fit into it. Through coded cultural language, it activates nostalgia for some. While activating obscurity for others. It asks players to be okay with not knowing an answer, and to feel even more comfortable engaging in dialogue to ask for the answer. That’s the functionality of a community. We create our own communities based on what we share and how we care for one another. My Game asks players to show their care through play, (verbal discussion) dance (intellectual conversation with one’s body) and investigation (openness to learning). 

As a part of my performance for Black Portraitures, I plan to engage participants in a participatory performance trivia style game. The game includes intergenerational true or false, fill in the blank, and identification questions, along with bonus questions that include movement in some form. The game concludes with a facilitated reflection on the questions and conversations that arose during the trivia game.

 


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