I began work on Heap Cull Gather Sow in May when I was awarded a fellowship with Pillsbury House + Theater through their program for emerging artists called Naked Stages.

Naked Stages is a 7-month fellowship that “provides performance artists with the time, resources, and mentorship needed to bring distinctive visions to life on stage.” In addition to regular feedback sessions, we’ve participated in workshops with local creators and nationally-renowned artists. (A special part of our fellowship was attending the first Theatrical Jazz Conference. ) We’ve also taken part in production meetings focused on the business side of art, from audience development to technical support, in efforts to assist us in developing a sustainable, artistic careers.

This year the Naked Stages cohort has four artists: hal sansone (Trans Man Gay Club Disco Fantasy), Skye Reddy (The Field of Three Horizons), Atim Opaka (This body is a gift: Messages from the Ancestors) and yours truly (Heap Cull Gather Sow). We will share our pieces in 6 shows across two weekends (Nov 14-16 and Nov 21-23, all at 7pm).

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Getting started

Much of my work since 2020 has been focused on or sourced from my own searching for ways to hold, digest, transmute, and siphon grief. As I began work on this show, I was concluding a year of work on an improvised vocal work, Giving Voice to Grief.

And with daily additions to the list of things hurting my heart via world events and social media, I realized that I have been improvising practices to help my head and my heart.

So when asked to bring “up to 5 minutes” of my “show” to prepare for our works in progress session, I started by revisiting a post I wrote here about making my “jar of broken pieces.” I outlined (and then abstracted) some of the steps of the ceremonial praxis I improvised while assembling the jar. That text became the prose I workshopped in our first session.

Then during our 3-day retreat (also in July), I did some staging and movement work with the “ceremony text” and began gathering (pun intended) bits of writing and ideas for songs/lyrics.

Of course, I knew I wanted to have songs/singing in my show so last month I moved my annual November improv project – 30 Days of Songtaneous Songs project – to September to help me find sonic seeds for my show. (I also figured I was gonna be a little too busy next month to post a song a day. 😉) Posting a song each day helped me create and collect a lot of ideas, including the frames of two gathering songs that have become scenes in Heap Cull Gather Sow.

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Working with a director

In spite of all those years I worked as the vocal coach for Northeast’s musical theater program, I actually don’t know a lot about making theater. Fortunately, Naked Stages provides funding for each artist to work with a director.

I have the privilege and pleasure of working with Dipankar Muhkerjee, as the director for my piece.

I first worked with Pangea World Theater and really began getting to know Dipankar and Meena (Pangea’s founders and artistic directors) in the summer of 2020 when I was part of The Burning Truth Project.

(It’s worth noting that I’d been hearing about Pangea for a number of years prior. Given all the time I spend improvising, I don’t know why I continue to be surprised at how consistently people and places arrive “right on time”?)

In fact, Dipankar deserves credit for planting the seed which resulted in my applying to the Naked Stages fellowship program in the first place. After a rehearsal or a gathering (I can’t quite recall), he said, “We should do something together? Maybe a show with your music?” This memory of this conversation surfaced when I saw the posting for the fellowship. So while I had no idea how I might create a theatrical work, I thought to myself “Dipankar thinks there’s a show there” so I applied.

I’ve spent some (okay, a lot?) of this fellowship feeling like I don’t know what I’m doing. I have to keep reminding myself that that’s the point. I also remind myself regularly that I actually know what I’m doing, even if I’m still figure out what I’m making.

So the Dipankar and I have been meeting regularly and the show is arriving in pieces, mostly through (surprise, surprise) improvisations.

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Lastly, I can’t help but notice the amount of tactile processes and crafted items that have been part of my evolving griefwork praxis – collages, gathering and interacting with broken things, mending/hand sewing, placemaking, etc. Less surprising is the fact that many of these practices – and items – are finding their way into my show.

See the show!

Heap Cull Gather Sow – November 15, 21 and 23rd – 7pm
Pillsbury House + Theatre
3501 Chicago Avenue South, Mpls
Get tix (pay what you can pricing)

A healing project with the Give Get Sistet

In May of 2021, some of the Sistetmembers were in the midst of a filming a song cycle to include in a commemoration of the lynching of Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson and Isaac McGhie in Duluth in 1920.

As we prepared to film, police killed Daunte Wright in Brooklyn Center. The discussions we had before and during our singing were deep, painful, and necessary. We recognized the balm of gathering as Black artists/singers to express and experience our reactions alongside the challenge of authentically experiencing these emotions while being watched/filmed. We began to envision singing together in places of wounding around the city.

In September of 2021, we were awarded a grant to create a Community Healing project through the city’s Creative Response Fund.

With this support, we serenaded places in Minneapolis.

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Powderhorn Park

“Anything healing that happens in the park ripples out and invites us to know ourselves, our nature and each other better.”

We held our final serenade as folks were readying the space for the 10 year Poetry & Pie event in Powderhorn park. We gathered around a picnic table off to the side to “set the stage” for this community event. Singer-songwriter Kashimana joined us.

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“Powderhorn Park is the heart of the Powderhorn community. It was a site of pain and activism, community organizing, and public engagement during and after the Uprising. Powderhorn Park is the place we center and recognize ourselves as community. Anything healing that happens in the park ripples out and invites us to know ourselves, our nature and each other better.” 

“For me today the sky set the tone for the day.  I felt free and loved and grateful to be with my Sistet family.  After such a long trip to get here, the serenading felt like it spoke to all my wounds and worn out places.”

“We did what need to be done. My favorite part was making the loops with Kashimana.”

“I was in need of healing today. Feeling exhausted and violated. Then my Sistahs took up my burden and sang to and for me and we found the way through and the bag came back. “

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Juneteenth  Serenades – North and Uptown Minneapolis

“The energy from these healing sessions reaches farther into the community than we thought.”

We joined folks celebrating Juneteenth at Sumner Library and sang to our community and our ancestors. Later, as we sang together at the Bridge for Youth Juneteenth event in uptown, a young volunteer at one of the tables at the event asked to sing with us.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=aKIOpzXaojk%3Ffeature%3Doembed

“We noticed the power of our intentions and the spaces we make for ourselves.”

“Windy and then hot
 We gave it all that we’d got
 Which is really quite a lot.”

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North High

When we were thinking of places to serenade, we decided we especially wanted to sing to and for the young folks at North Community High School who have had such a painful year.

(No vids ’cause they kids.)

“Love songs to teens who giggled and said we sounded amazing. Improv in the science wing. Loving on the super mad dude.”

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North Commons

“So many ways to occupy a space …”

We incorporated an online session (and an Instagram Live) into this Serenade, which included guest artist Tamiko French (@Soulspeak_Expressions) as wells a couple of guests from other states. We came together to be together in community. We used our voices, moved our bodies and left the painting of the heart in the park when we took our leave.

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“Missing my people. Loving my Northside. Adding my tears to others’, lifting up energy for healing and grace, expressing ourselves audibly, visibly, and spiritually — as we serenade and petition for wholeness — outside, with nature.”

“So many ways to occupy a space — even from hundreds of miles away. Thank you all for letting me join you in a healing morning.”

“Gathered under a soft gray sky with bare feet on the ground. Connecting across the miles. Sistahs and smiles and sounds and songs. MJ and memories and good times. Leaving our heart(s) there. Soft rain after to help the healing grow.” 

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Pillsbury Theater

“On today, the Sistet gathered at the site of an importantly devastating piece of art ‘performed’ by loved ones to sing and pray on that place.”

We gathered in the early morning to serenade the outdoor diorama (stage) for What to Send Up When it Goes Down* before they began their second run.

Part ritual and part theatrical experience, What to Send Up When It Goes Down is a fiercely innovative play that sets out to disrupt the pervasiveness of anti-Blackness and rejoice in the resilience of Black People throughout history. Using monologues, scenes, songs and discussion the play offers space for examination, reflection and ultimately a cathartic cleansing of harm caused by anti-Blackness that permeates us all.

We recognized and wanted to support the enormous and difficult healing work our community members were enacting as they presented that particular play at that time in that space. (Pillsbury Theater is only blocks from George Floyd Square.)

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“The Sistet blessed the altar with music and movement, and blessed the ritual makers with talismans and prayer.”
— Aimee

“Heard the stage/alter “over here, this way” – we followed. The sky opened up a clear view, I arched my back, felt big, small and peaceful. The seal is cracked, space is warmed up now.”
— Alicia

“My partner carried out the design of Uncle Seitu Jones diorama. We studied some symbols that we agreed would support the family (the Black thespians) that is carrying out this hard, beautiful piece. May it “ground” and support. So he added these symbols last night before the Sistet continued to bless support and protect, benediction & ready the space.” — Jayanthi

“Alicia and A were there when I arrived. The space felt quiet and still and the early morning light was sweetly illuminating  faces and the space. Then Kenna and Aimee, then Mankwe arrived; we greeted and hugged. A received incense training from Alicia and Kenna. We formed a circle and sang “I Remember, I Believe” (during which Aimee and I shed some tears). We began singing and moving thru the space individually, yet connected. We talked about warrior spirits and space/time to fight. The Pillsbury folks began to arrive. We greeted and assisted in small ways and then took our leaves.”
— Sarah

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Acknowledgements

Funding is provided by The Creative Response Fund, a program of the Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy in the City of Minneapolis and also in part by The Kresge Foundation.

Here we are at the end of November and at the end of my current improvising project.

For each day in November, I sang/recorded at least one 3-minute improvisation. I allowed myself two takes of any idea and but I posted the selected song with no edits and shared compilations of the weeks here on this blog. (Watch week 1, week 2 and week 3.)

The songs from the final 9 days were varied and more than one the song I posted was the only song I created for the day. With three weeks practice, it seemed the music came more easily, or perhaps I simply trusted my instincts more. I still had to negotiate the camera (the first time I did this project, I only posted audio), but filming the videos added an artistic element and challenged me to interact with the surrounding space in ways I hadn’t in the previous 30 days project. In fact, the songs from last Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday and today were all created away from home.

Sunday’s song happened while visiting the “Say Their Names” art installation. The installation is near George Floyd Square in South Mpls and hosts representative headstones for numerous Black people killed by police throughout the United States. My singer friend Mankwe from the Give Get Sistet held space there weekly from July to October and I participated in many of those sessions (Music with the Ancestors).

I was (am) also considering the myth and erasure driving the Thanksgiving holiday and feeling challenged by celebrating a holiday and occasion that many of my Indigenous/Native friends finding galling and painful. In the spirit of mourning and remembering, I once again visited this “cemetery” in south Mpls. The sun was setting and the beautiful willow still held some leaves. I recorded a song to post and then lingered to speak the names. I finished as the sun was setting.

It was then that I realized that this particular 30-day singing project was part of a continuing search for how to create and develop my own rituals and ceremonies for healing. Sending you light and songs as you practice and/or locate your own.??