Artistic Statement

My work consists of traditional theater, public intervention, filmed performance, sound performance, and workshops. I use my body, Black Archives, vulnerability and conversation to foster empathy and build connections between people, aiming to change the audience experience from that of a passive viewer to an active participant. 

I see performance has the ability to transform audiences' perceptions about individuals and society. I am constantly striving to harness the power of performance. Seeing it as an art form that goes beyond mainstream entertainment or education. Utilizing it as a device that provides visual experiences and helps me to marry two parts of myself: the artist and the citizen. Permitting me to look at my own experiences and explore the legality and illegality of black vernaculars in a larger cultural context. Black archives and personal family history are used alongside cultural narratives surrounding Black women to explore the tensions and misunderstandings that shape the current emotional landscape of anti-blackness. 

My work at its best deepens understanding between people, connecting them and giving them permission to engage their curiosity about one another. The work calls audiences to action. I make performances in order to give participants the opportunity for discord. Expanding theatrical experiences outside the walls of theaters and galleries into the streets and into minds. In hopes that, with time and care, we can discover what happens to the air in a room, when love is professed, or a secret is told, or a racial slur is uttered, or How the tears of a stranger on television feel like our own?