SLIPPAGE is delighted to relate that our performance texts for Soundz at the Back of My Head is featured on the cover of Theater, the journal published by Yale School of Drama and Duke University Press. Volume 50 No. 3 includes a text by SLIPPAGE affiliate Quran Karriem about his work on the performance work, as well as the performance text by Thomas F. DeFrantz. In addition, the journal includes an overview to the entire TalkingDancing series, which includes i am black [you have to be willing to now know (2016), White Privilege (2018) and Soundz (2020). The volume is available on the Duke University Press website, or the Theater website. https://www.dukeupress.edu/theater.
DeFrantz says, “It’s been a terrific collaboration with Theater and its editorial team to produce the textual artefacts of these three performances concerned with experimental artmaking and Black identities.”
Soundz at the Back of My Head, created and performed by Thomas F. DeFrantz, Quran Karriem, Rebecca Uliasz, and Asami Morita, was nominated for a 2020 New York Performance Award (the BESSIES) in the category of Outstanding Sound Design by Karriem. The work is described as a dialogic manifesto talking-dancing-technology work engages its audience with the contradictory impulses that run through the creative imagination of an artist working within experimental performance and the afterlives of slavery. Karriem’s exquisite artistry provides crucial counterpoint to the production, which enjoyed a world premiere at Gibney Dance, January 9-11, 2020.
All three texts for these performance events have been commissioned for publication by Theater.
The TalkingDancing series continues to tour in various configurations. i am black will be performed at the University of Iowa in the fall of 2021; White Privilege is scheduled for performances in Amsterdam in the summer of 2021. SLIPPAGE intends to film all three works among audiences in Durham, NC in Spring 2022.
SLIPPAGE has moved into a new operation and funding model in 2021, and we look forward to your participation in our crucial arts *technology* social justice initiatives. In the meantime, congratulations to all the affiliated artists who have earned this outstanding recognition in a leading journal of Theater research and criticism!
For more information, email t.defrantz@duke.edu.