PRODUCTION PHOTOS
Re/Emergence
Devised by the Re/Emergence Collective
Supported in part by a grant from the Easthampton Cultural Council and made possible with funding by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ New Work New England Program
Executive Producer & Director: Jennifer Onopa
Director & Choreographer: Darius Taylor
Production Manager & Safety Officer: Olivia Holcomb
Dramaturg & Producer: Claudia Nolan
Dramaturg & Script Writer: Tatiana Rodriguez
Dramaturg & Head of Marketing: Afrikah Smith
Production Stage Manager: Achaetey Kabal
Scenic Designer & Carpenter: Xinyuan Li
Costume Designer & Lead Builder: Christina Beam
Scenic Carpenters: Andrew Todd and Brandon Hall
Costume Build Team: Jessica Haswell, Sami Brzozowski, and Mikayla Reid
Production Photos by Sage Orville, Nikki Lee and Julian Parker-Burns
“Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.”—Arundhati Roy, “The Pandemic is a Portal,” Financial Times, April 3, 2020
Re/Emergence was conceived as a living meditation, an outdoor performance-ritual honoring major movements and events of the year 2020 and early 2021: Covid-19’s isolation and massive loss of human life, protests for Black racial equality, emerging awareness for many people of anti-AAPI hate in this country, and increased distrust in the institutions of governance.
The arc of the performance was inspired by our collective trauma, but it bent towards hope. The audience moved through three performance sites, from a space of loss and grief, to a call to action and transformation, and finally to a collaborative reimagination of a stronger and better future.
The performance was profoundly inspired by the natural world and its many instances of growth and regeneration. We aimed to use these metaphors to bring our community together to honor the challenges of the past and celebrate possibilities of the future, meditating on what we want to leave behind, and what we want to bring forward with us as we emerge from this pandemic year.