Archive: Arts & Entertainment

The Association for Graduates in Theatre (AGIT) and the Department of Performing and Media Arts at Cornell University announced its third annual AGIT Lab, a showcase of experimental works by Cornell graduates. This year's AGIT Lab puts its focus on solo performance. The evening is divided into two-forty minute pieces: Speaking Out of Turn: a Feminist Story Circle and Kids (a Glimpse of SHADE).

Speaking Out of Turn is an ensemble-based solo performance featuring seven women from varied backgrounds. During the course of the performance, each woman provides a snapshot into her life while the group provides support for her narrative. Speaking Out of Turn uses traditional oral history story-telling and incorporates movement, soundscapes, and performance into the backdrop.


Throughout the workshop process each participant served as the director of their own piece while the ensemble provided feedback and collaborative input into the shaping of each performance story. Speaking Out of Turn combines the usage of feminist performance theory and practice to offer an alternative model of theater-making. The piece features Performing & Media Arts undergraduates, graduates, and women from the community. Performers include: Jazlin Gomez, Alissa Jaquin, Caitlin Kane, Jayme Kilburn, Rosalie Purvis, Katie Stone, and Erin Stoneking.

The Kids is a solo piece by J. Michael Kinsey that explores the embodiment of men who identify as black and gay. The Kids uses prose, verse, media, music and movement to deconstruct tropes and other issues relegated to bodies that inhabit black queer spaces for men.  Through interrogation of identity, gender performativity and the intersection of race and sexuality, this piece seeks to foreground a himinisitic space that empowers black SGL (same gender loving) men and offers visibility of this niche community.

J. Michael Kinsey is a second year PhD student at Cornell University in the Performing & Media Arts Department. He is a member of Actor's Equity, a two-time Audelco Award Nominee, and also noted for his theatrical contribution on the 2014 Bessie award winning piece Mr. Tol E. Rance. The Kids has been workshopped in NYC and Montreal, Canada. Kinsey deems himself to be a thinker, writer, actor, director and cultural critic of Black performance and theatre.

Speaking Out of Turn: a Feminist Story Circle and The Kids (a Glimpse of SHADE) will be presented April 14-16 at 7:30pm in the Black Box Theater in the Schwartz Performing Arts Center at Cornell University (430 College Avenue).

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