New Works (in progress)

Fall 2018 New Work Residency: Ritual and Resilience

As part of cfpa’s ReClaim series, we invited three local performing artists to each make a new piece that in some way engages with ritual and resilience: ritual of all types (secular, cultural, religious, spiritual, mundane, ceremonial, invented, reinvented, quoted, etc.) and ritual’s relationship to/with/around resilience. With the support of free rehearsal space, a mentor specifically chosen for this project, and a public presentation and audience conversation, these three artists are each moving a new work (and a new way of working) further down a developmental path.

This presentation of new works is open to the public: pay what you can at the door. (Limited seating: reserve your seat for free at Eventbrite.)

All projects will be presented on both nights.

Nelle June Anderson's project focuses on the intersection of her rigorous opera training and her art-pop heart. She is seeking “a place where these old and new styles can play and breathe together, overcoming differences of genre and origin to make a new, cohesive sound. . . . What is the difference between being an interpreter of a work and a generator of a work? . . . What is necessary to make my art feel like it’s mine?” Nelle’s mentor is singer Abigail Wolf . Nelle holds a Bachelor of Arts in Music from Bard College (NY) in opera performance. Nelle is a multi-instrumentalist, poet, and electronic producer. 

Margo Gray’s project, A/part, is “an interactive performance exploring the confusion and trauma of being uprooted from your family and culture of origin and compelled to conform to another way of life.” Margo’s mentor is local installation artist and Syrian immigrant Essma Imady. Margo is a theatre maker and director. She is the Producing Artistic Director of Playable Artworks, former Artistic Director of Prologue Theatre Co., a former Fulbright Fellow at the Moscow Art Theatre School, an alumna of Grinnell College, and a graduate of the John Wells MFA Directing program at Carnegie Mellon University.

Kat Purcell’s project takes an English Medieval morality play, The Castle of Perseverance, as a jumping-off point to explore “the intersections and conflicts between my bodily, corporeal identity and the world around me . . .With the use of interactive sculpture, dance, sourced interviews and stories of perseverance, I will invite the audience first to the field, then into battle, and finally to the place where Mankind is born and meets his death: inside the Castle of Perseverance.” Kat’s mentor is artist and activist Eleanor Savage. Kat is a radical nonbinary transexual performer, lighting designer, experimental producer and theatrical director. They are best known in the Twin Cities for conceiving and co-producing Patrick's Cabaret's Lightning Rod, an explicitly political flash theatre intensive for artists. Kat graduated from the London International School of Performing Arts in 2009.

cfpa's ReClaim series is an assembly space to connect all kinds of audiences, artists, experiences, and stories. Our events explore the vitality and evolution of American identity, and the ways in which creative works reflect our lived experience (or not). Our events grapple with the stories we hear and see, the stories we make and tell, and the ways in which we are (or are not) changed by creative representations of our experiences. We support artists who engage fiercely with the complex and contradictory nature of the human experience. We support audiences who yearn for greater personal engagement between works of art and the daily life of our community. We assemble for lively questions, dynamic conversation, and to encourage new ways of understanding each other’s lives.