In New York City’s coldest month of the year, in the middle of a pandemic, we perform an illuminated outdoor performance of a ritual for collective grief, safely distanced in the streets and on rooftops.
These performances are born from what we experienced as dire lack of public avenues to process or recognition of our collective trauma after nearly a year of an unprecedented pandemic. This show is an offering addressing collective mourning, healing, human resiliency and justice in community care. Since the genesis of 2020, we have largely been forced into isolation, maintaining our connections and consuming art virtually all while grieving the loss of thousands daily, barely able to keep up with the magnitude of our collective loss on a global scale. Our rituals and traditions for mourning have been often cut off or diminished. As the violence of white supremacy and capitalism continues to terrorize and we often find ourselves whip lashed between social isolation to protests for racial justice in the streets, how are our bodies finding ways to process the stress, chaos, and devastation around us without disassociating?
Our collective has been discussing the need for more open-facing, public rituals and holding space for grief and healing while developing new traditions and mythologies for this process. As an international collective, with members from Iran, India, Mexico, Taiwan, France and the United States, we bring story elements from our own traditions and cultures into a sort of Exquisite Corpse amalgam to create this new myth about mourning, writ large with illuminated puppets into an outdoor spectacle.
We are bringing light in the dark winter months, and performing safely and intimately on the streets and rooftops in neighborhoods throughout Brooklyn. We will pass through as if almost a dream or a vision with illuminated large puppets and costumes gliding through the streets and then into the skies on rooftops.
We are live streaming and recording these performances so audience can watch safely from their own homes as well. We have invitations to perform on rooftops of friends in Brooklyn. The first venue is the Brooklyn Time’s-Up! Space in Williamsburg at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge. At the end of the performance we will process over the bridge with the lanterns, ending in China Town.
DATES:
Sat. March 6th: 6pm Williamsburg: meet at the corner of Bedford Ave and South Sixth street
Sun. March 7th: 6pm Crown Heights: Meet on Park Place between Bedford and Rogers Ave
Mon. March 8th: 7pm Bed-Stuy: meet at Marion Hopkinson Playground on Marion st. closer to Rockaway Ave.
Tues. March 9th: 6pm Williamsburg: meet at the corner of Bedford Ave and South Sixth street, culminating in a lantern procession over the Williamsburg Bridge.
Follow @Allímitecollective and #QuietUs/RiotUs for more details
Performances will also be live streamed on Instagram
Please donate to the project: Venmo @QuietUsRiotUs
Co-devised with Leah Bachar, Shan Y Chuang, Spicy Delight, Sanam Erfani, Monica Dudárov Hunken, Benny Woodard and with Phil Andrews on trumpet.
Co-Directed by Leah Bachar and Monica Dudárov Hunken
Inspired and produced by Al Límite Collective
in collaboration with BoxCutter Collective members; Joe Therrien, Sam Wilson and Tom Cunningham
Art design by Monica Dudárov Hunken
Costume design by AnnTreesa Joy and Monica Dudárov Hunken
Music composed by Benny Woodard
Narration alternating with Sam Wilson, Yana Landowne and Sylvain Souklaye
Ensemble/ Co-Devisers:
Spicy Delight (They/them)
Spicy Delight performs an ode to spirituality and sexuality; recognising that both are powerfully whole when indistinguishable from each other. Their performances lay them vulnerable, inviting the audience to do the same. 
Shan Y. Chuang (she/her)
was born and raised in Taiwan and has been dancing and performing since the age of 5. Shan was trained in classical ballet, traditional Chinese dance and various Musical Theatre genres such as tap, jazz and hip hop. She is a proud graduate of Circle in the Square’s Musical Theater program and is currently a member of Katharine Pettit Creative and LINKED Dance Theatre. As a dancer, Shan is a principal resident dancer at Katharine Pettit Creative with which she has performed the dance piece, "OutCry", in many dance festivals in NYC and also performed the 40 minutes dance musical "I Could Never Love Anyone..." at the Educational Alliance Center for Recovery & Wellness. She is also a collaborator with LINKED Dance Theater and has been in three immersive productions, “Soul of the Sea'', “Unseen”, and “Freaks Don’t Cry”, performing throughout NYC. Her theater credits include Once Upon A Mattress (Gallery Players), Caligula (New Ohio Theater), Revolt In Asturias, Comfort Women:A New Musical, Behind the Mask (Lead), Gen 根 (Dolce Vita), The City (Alive Worldwide), Anything Goes (Angel), Smokey Joe’s Cafe (DeLee), Bat Boy, The Lesson (Maid). 
Monica Hunken (she/they)
is a Brooklyn-based performer who creates docu-adventure theatre including; Reading the Water, Blondie of Arabia, The Wild Finish, Hunker Down, Outside the World and Mt Rushmore. In NY, she has been produced at Culture Project, Exponential Festival, The Brick, The Living Theatre, Polish Cultural Institute and HERE Arts Center. She has been produced in Australia’s Horse’s Mouth Festival, the Netherland’s DeParade Festival, Norway’s PIT festival, the Glastonbury Festival in England, among many other theaters across the globe. She was an artist in residence at SPACE on Ryder Farm, Fish Factory in Iceland and winner of the Patrolio Award for her work responding to social injustice through art in Spain. She has worked in refugee camps around the world facilitating arts programming. She is an avid cyclist, having ridden through over 20 countries while also being an activist/ organizer having worked with Rev Billy and The Church of Stop Shopping, Resist Spectra, Time’s-Up!, New Sanctuary Coalition, Sane Energy Project on environmental and immigration issues and she works as a direct action trainer with Beautiful Trouble, GreenPeace and Rainforest Action Network in NYC and abroad. Photo by Hunter Canning. monicahunken.com |
Sanam Erfani (She/her)
A multi-dimensional artist, Sanam is an award winning actress, DJ, and playwright who loves to create and perform in transformative experiences onstage and screen. Her plays include: “Attraction” (New York Theater Festival); “Hush: Inside the Waiting Womb” (The Players Club NY & Hudson Theater, LA); original 12 character solo show “Last Import” (Joyce SoHo, NY); and an original adaptation of Ibsen (Doll's House) & Strindberg (Miss Julie) called “La Liberata” (Dixon Place, NY). Recent films include: film festival selection "The Refuge" (Official Selection Local Sightings Film Festival) award winning feature film "Imitation Girl" (on Amazon), award winning short, Scheherazade (winner: Champs-Elysées Film Festival, winner: DC Shorts), and Hasti Joon (Hollywood Shorts Film Festival). Off-off Broadway Credits include: Babette’s Feast (The Connelly Theater, NY): The Fall (Flamboyan, NY); Miss Lilly Gets Boned (New Ohio, NY); Cats Don’t Grin(Cherry Lane, NY). The first Iranian-born student to graduate Columbia University’s MFA Acting program, she is the recipient of the prestigious Bob Hope Fellowship for performative excellence. She feels truly blessed to perform with this brilliant ensemble. 
Leah Bachar (she/her)
Leah Bachar is a performer/producer/director/experimenter. Fascinated with human connection, Leah is drawn to public performance and unique, interactive situations that create an open arena for spontaneous experiences and promote no barriers between the spectators and performers. With a deep interest in ritualistic theatre and the healing properties of the arts, she combines her passion for guerrilla theatre, different cultures, the written word, surreal stagings, entering trance states, dancing, radical artistic collaboration, social experiments, and curating happenings where performance art and human healing intertwine. Realizing the powerful social and political message that the arts emit, Leah is interested in initiating conversations and introducing people to one another who wouldn’t normally meet in order to help facilitate a greater universal discourse between artists and their communities. 
Benny Woodard (he/him)
Benny Woodard is a musician, teacher and activist originally from South Hadley, MA and currently residing in Bed Stuy. As a drummer, he has performed internationally at venues such as The Blue Note, The Bruno Walter Auditorium at Lincoln Center, The Bern Jazz Festival in Switzerland, and his parents’ basement. He is an active member of the No NBK Pipeline Coalition, a group dedicated to shutting down National Grid’s North Brooklyn Fracked Gas Pipeline. |
