Often I start with a text and then Peter makes a drawing. The text can also be the language of a song. But as a Nigerian-Igbo woman growing up in the States, I’ve always felt a lack of texts. I don’t need them to be true. I just need them to somehow open up different spaces, potential zones of possibility… I feel the imprint of a text even if I can’t remember the exact language. I feel such a great opening with language, and feel all of the double meanings, the missed meanings. For me the gaps in between the sentences are really exciting. — Okwui Okpokwasili*
ADAKU, PART 1: THE ROAD OPENS—a new work by performing artist Okwui Okpokwasili, with music by Okpokwasili and Peter Born—makes its way to Los Angeles this week with three performances at REDCAT.
The artist’s practice of “speculative mythology” in sight and song finds transformative shape in this tale of cultural theft and renewal across generations of women engaged in concurrent discourse.** The work’s choreography was conceived by Okpokwasili and Born in collaboration with the cast: mayfield brooks, McKenzie Frye, Audrey Hailes, Samita Sinha, Stacy Lynn Smith, and AJ Wilmore.
See link below for details.
https://www.redcat.org/events/2023/okwui-okpokwasili
ADAKU, PART 1: THE ROAD OPENS
Conceived and written by Okwui Okpokwasili
Performed by mayfield brooks, McKenzie Frye, Audrey Hailes, Samita Sinha, Stacy Lynn Smith, AJ Wilmore, and Okwui Okpokwasili
Directed by Peter Born and Okwui Okpokwasili
Thursday through Saturday, May 25, 26, and 27
8:30 pm
REDCAT
631 West 2nd Street, downtown Los Angeles
*Ana Janevski, “A River of Voices: An Interview with Okwui Okpokwasili,” with Peter Born, Museum of Modern Art, New York, August 5, 2022.
https://www.moma.org/magazine/articles/762
**Quoted term from ICA / Boston, May 2023.
Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born, adaku, part 1: the road opens, from top: Audrey Hailes (left), Samita Sinha, Stacy Lynn Smith, mayfield brooks, McKenzie Frye, AJ Wilmore, and Okwui Okpokwasili (background right); Hailes (right); Sinha, brooks, Okpokwasili (center), Frye, Smith; Hailes and Wilmore; Wilmore and Hailes.
Set, lighting, and video design by Peter Born; sound design by Born and Will Johnson.
Performance photographs (5) by Lauren Miller, ICA Boston, May 2023, courtesy and © the photographer, Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born, and ICA Boston.