River See Performance Script

by Sharon Bridgforth

In performance everyone present is involved/is responsible for the experience of River See. One actor (Sonja Parks) tells the story (the entire script is her text). Additionally, during performance singers and dancers respond to Bridgforth's gestures (her Composition language/which asks them to do various things). The audience is invited to choose how they will be active Witness/participants. Some listen/hold space. Some translate bits of text, some offer gestures. Some share in telling the story. Some chant. All work to serve the main character SEE as she tells her story. Through a collective process, all become responsible to one another in the art of creating a piece about Love. This way of working, uses Black traditions as the base for bringing together people from different ethnicities, religions, generations, gender and sexual identities, places of origin, class backgrounds, abilities, and aesthetics.

With support from the MAP Fund, National Performance Network Commissioning Fund, Presenting Partners that include: Links Hall (Chicago), The Theater Offensive (Boston), Pillsbury House Theatre (MLPS), Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator (Miami) and Living Arts Tulsa (Tusla), Bridgforth conducted 18 River See workshop experiments around the country to date. Experiments focused on selecting the excerpts that make up the performance script; developing performance techniques necessary to make jazz out of these blues stories; and the refining of community engagement best practices. The show premiered at Links Hall in Chicago in June 2014 and is now on tour. More at riversee.com and sharonbridgforth.com.

70 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 19, 2014

About the author

Bridgforth is RedBone Press author of" love conjure/blues" and the Lambda Literary Award winning, "the bull-jean stories". She, Omi Osun Joni L. Jones and Lisa L. Moore are co-editors of "Experiments in a Jazz Aesthetic: Art, Activism, Academia, and the Austin Project", University of Texas Press. Anthologies that feature her work include: "solo/black/woman: Scripts, Interviews, and Essays", Eds. E. Patrick Johnson and Ramon Rivera-Servera, Northwestern University Press; "Blacktino Queer Performance", Eds. E. Patrick Johnson and Ramon Rivera-Servera, Duke University Press; ."Windy City Queer: GLBTQ Dispatches from the Third Coast", Ed Kathie Bergquist, University of Wisconsin Press; "First Person Queer: Who We Are (So Far), Eds. Richard Labonte & Lawrence Schim"el, Arsenal Pulp Press; "New Monologues For Women By Women", Eds. Liz Engelman & Tori Haring-Smith, Heinemann; and "Is This Forever, Or What?: Poems & Paintings From Texas", Ed. Naomi Shihab Nye, Greenwillow. Her "River See: Theatrical Jazz Performance Installation" script is featured in Obsidian Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, Issue 43.1. Bridgforth's current project, "dat Black Mermaid Man Lady/Home" will premiere in 2018. An imagined "dat Black Mermaid Man Lady/Home" performance is published in "Imagined Theatres: Writing for a Theoretical Stage".