Thingification, a one-woman show by Duriel E. Harris, will be at MPAACT May 4, Greenhouse Theater2, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave., Chicago.
Thingification is a one-woman show of poetry, performance, music and dance that invigorates with the power of word and sound. Set in contemporary Chicago, the play transports the audience through time and space, enacting collective struggles against “thingification”—the annihilating, objectifying force at the core of all oppressions. Even as they perform aspects of sexuality, gender, race and class, the characters question and queer those constructs, withstanding society’s expectations through the spoken art of signifying. Taking up Funkadelic’s timely directive (“Free your mind … and your ass will follow”), Thingification transforms trauma into transcendence.
Tickets are $16, showtime 7:30 p.m. See mpaact.org/shows.html.
Duriel E. Harris is co-founder of Call & Response—a dynamic of Black women and performance—and the avant-garde poetry/performance trio the Black Took Collective (BTC). Harris is the author of three poetry collections including the 2015 Nightboat Poetry Prize-winning volume No Dictionary of a Living Tongue (forthcoming, 2017). A MacDowell and Millay Colony fellow, Harris has received grants from the Illinois Arts Council, the Cave Canem Foundation, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
Recent appearances include performances at the Chicago Jazz Festival (with Douglas Ewart and Inventions creative music ensemble), The Foundry Theater (Antioch College), Links Hall (Chicago), Dixon Place (NYC), and the Wild Project (NYC). Current undertakings include the conceptual work “Blood Labyrinth” and the solo performance project “Thingification.” Selections from Thingification have been featured at the Fresh Fruit Festival, the Art Institute of Chicago, the University of Ghana-Legon, Kwara State University (Nigeria), the Corner Playhouse (U Missouri), and Babylon Cinema (Berlin). Editor of Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, Harris is an associate professor of English in the Graduate Creative Writing Program at Illinois State University.
Further information at the link red.vendini.com/ticket-software.html?t=tix&e=630d7c6fa09cd63124513c5df7551364.