EVA YAA ASANTEWAA GRANT 2019 FINALIST

ANNA MARTINE WHITEHEAD

Anna Martine Whitehead does performance. She's been presented by the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art; San José Museum of Art; Velocity Dance Center; and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. She's worked with Onye Ozuzu, Jefferson Pinder, taisha paggett, Every house has a door, Keith Hennessy, and the Prison + Neighborhood Art Project, among others. She's been recognized by the Graham Foundation, Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, 3Arts, Chicago Dancemakers Forum, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Headlands Center for the Arts, and the Rauschenberg Foundation. Martine has written for Art21, C Magazine, frieze, Art Practical; and has contributed chapters to publications including Queer Dance: Meanings and Makings (Oxford, 2017). Martine is the author of TREASURE | My Black Rupture (Thread Makes Blanket, 2016).

force!

FORCE! is a punk opera about queer and trans women of color waiting to get into prison. Force considers Black and Brown femme and queer sociality when framed by the Prison Industrial Complex. The work will use traditional elements of tragicomic theater—archetypes presented over the course of a dramatic narrative, lighting design, a classical chorus, etc—and will explore the operatic form by presenting an arc through both music and movement.

After three years of teaching dance at Stateville Prison in Illinois and frequent visits payed to a friend at San Quentin Prison, I’m consistently struck by the relationships that occur between women and children in the waiting areas. Because of time, architecture, and prison protocol, loved ones are forced into a beautiful and tragic intimacy. Like many friends I accompany on prison visits I identify as queer, which begs consideration of the waiting room as queer space—a homosocial third space of care, rage, and discomfort in the queer tradition. To reflect this, FORCE! will feature an all qt+ bipoc cast and majority qt+ / bipoc crew (qt+ = queer and/or trans and/or more; bipoc = Black/Brown/Indigenous/person of color). – Anna Martine Whitehead