Course Framework black/water
Virtual Course: black/water: Worlding, Wilding, and Wandering as Womanist Praxis
Fellows at Weeksville Heritage Center, 2018
Course Framework
About JPS LAB
JPS Lab is a hybrid (virtual and in-person) creative development initiative for emerging, established and advanced performers, organizers, and educators. The course, Black/water: Worlding, Wilding, and Wandering as Womanist Praxis, offers seven half-day sessions that build on Golden's current scholarship, artistic practice, and cultural organizing efforts. Those who successfully complete course requirements may be invited to participate in future performances, workshop facilitation, and production support opportunities.
Black/water is a rigorous virtual course for individuals interested in womanist public performance, climate justice, and reparations. Participants will be expected to work independently and in small groups. The course is open to everyone regardless of expertise. One must be an avid reader, writer, and critical thinker to get the most out of the course.
Admitted students will explore: theatrical ceremony, womanist praxis, ritual poetics, environmental justice, and climate reparations. The course features lectures, workshops, readings, viewings, and fieldwork. Each participant will be required to complete an individual and a group project, along with required readings, writing, and performances. No professional artistic or academic experience is required.
Participants will gather virtually during half-day workshops in March 2023, April 2023, and May 2023.
Course Themes
Womanist Ritual Performance
In the tradition of…
Alice Walker, Nina Simone, Sonia Sanchez, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, Shirley Chisolm, Barbara Jordan, Kimberlee Crenshaw, Maxine Waters, Harriet Tubman, Alice Coltrane, Alexis De Veaux, Barbara Ann Teer, Ntozake Shange, Katherine Dunham, Pearl Primus, Elizabeth Catlett, and many more ancestors, elders, and folks of all ages conjuring freedom.
Black/water examines the cultural and sociopolitical impact of womanist and Black feminist theatre and experimental performance from the 1970s to the movement for Black lives. The term “womanist,” coined by Alice Walker, is rooted in the cultural and political work of Black women's freedom. We will explore womanist and Black feminist performance praxis as a holistic framework for creative activism, movement building, and liberatory transformation through a range of creative texts and media.
Ebony performs, 2016
Environmental Justice
Participants will learn about visioning techniques that center an ecowomanist approach to supporting and advancing the movement for environmental justice. We will study the Red, Black, and Green New Deal as a framework for political and cultural organizing, among other approaches and texts. We will also explore how others have created alternative infrastructures to care for communities in the midst of climate crisis and ecological resilence. Participants will leave with a clear and foundational understanding of how they can make behavioral and institutional changes that support the thriving of people, communities, and systems.
Reparations
The program views reparations as an approach to holistic and sustained community repair that encompasses transformation in the cultural, political, economic, and social beliefs and systems. We envision reparations as a non-reactive, autonomous, and generative process that is inextricably connected to the throughline of diasporic Black liberation. Participants will participate in strategic and creative study that deeply considers the systems of mutual aid, support, and well-being which have guided our communities historically, in this contemporary moment and into the liberated Black future.
Black/water participants will engage the following critical questions:
What is the relationship between emancipation and land justice?
How can artistic practice and performance transform our relationship to our environment?
How can womanist and Black feminist performance practices and rituals affirm and advance radical and reciprocal relationships with the natural world?
What constitutes a womanist and Black feminist powered economic system?
What is a womanist model for economic and climate reparations?
By the end of the Black/water course, participants will gain insight into methodologies, strategies, and creative embodiment techniques that advance womanist praxis, climate justice, and reparations within their own personal practices. The course concludes with a series of collective and individual presentations. Participants will leave this experience equipped to build collective artistic and movement-sustaining practices.
Participation and successful completion in the course includes:
Attending virtual sessions
Viewing virtual performances, events, and exhibits
Engaging in independent and group study
Completing regular writing assignments
Reading and listening to books and articles
1- Group presentation
1- Final presentation
Who Should Apply?
The JPS Lab accepts participants, 23 years of age or older, into the virtual group until we are at capacity. This opportunity is open to both emerging and established educators, activists, and performance artists regardless of age, gender and ability. Community participants of various levels of performance, educational, or community organizing experience are highly encouraged to apply. We are building a creative learning community of folks, from emerging to advanced, who will be excited to learn both independently and with others.
Early iteration of In the Name of the Mother Tree
Applicants should be interested in creative exploration and public scholarship rooted in activism. They should also be interested in creating work that demonstrates critical exploration and deep love for Black culture and legacies of Black liberation that actively engage individuals, families, and the constellation we are creating through this course. Applicants should be excited to both learn independently and as part of a community. Priority will be given to Black, Indigenous, and people of the global majority.
Program Calendar
JPS Lab meets virtually via Google Meet in March, April, and May 2023. All times are EDT.
Applications Launch: January 17, 2023
Applications Due: February 17, 2023
Notification of Acceptance: February 20, 2023
Tuition Due: February 27, 2023
Immersion 1
12:00 PM - 5:00 PM | March 4, 2023
Immersion 2
12:00 PM - 5:00 PM | March 5, 2023
Immersion 3
12:00 PM - 5:00 PM | March 26, 2023
Immersion 4
12:00 PM - 5:00 PM | April 22, 2023
Immersion 5
12:00 PM - 5:00 PM | May 6, 2023
Immersion 6
12:00 PM - 5:00 PM | May 20, 2023
Immersion 7
12:00 PM - 5:00 PM | May 21, 2023
*All dates are mandatory.
Contact Information
Team JPS and Team BDAC
919.283.9032
projects@bettysdaughterarts.com
Course Host: Jupiter Performance Studio
Early performance of In The Name Of The Mother Tree
Established in 2020, the Jupiter Performance Studio (JPS) is a hub for the development, exploration, and production of diasporic Black performance traditions. JPS’ work is guided by three core values: ceremony, spectacle, and flight in the pursuit of liberation, joy, and justice. JPS devises theatrical ceremonies, community interventions, cultural organizing campaigns, and community education experiences with community members, artists, organizations and activists nationally. JPS’ current projects include: Jubilee 11213: The Keeping, commissioned by Weeksville Heritage Center and In The Name Of The Mother Tree, commissioned by Apollo Theater and National Black Theatre. jupiterperformancestudio.com and bettysdaughterarts.com
Photo: Melisa Cardona
Course Designer and Facilitator
Theatrical ceremonialist, culture strategist, entrepreneur, and public scholar, Ebony Noelle Golden wields a womanist ritual praxis to engender emancipation and radical Black futures. She devises performances, organizational models, and initiatives through embodied ethnographic methods, cultural organizing, artistic rituals, and slow-stewed congregational experiments. Her work takes the form of processions, choreo-poems, durational dance rituals, walking tours, performance installations and cultural organizing initiatives. Winner of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education’s Transformational Practice Award, Golden’s goal is to incite and ignite the creative capacity of everyday folks to join the global movement for liberation and social justice. Her archive reflects the messy, magical and medicinal journey of discovery she has pursued in service of conjuring a better world through cultural projects and performance.
Ebony founded Betty’s Daughter Arts Collaborative (BDAC), a cultural consultancy and arts accelerator, in 2009. Through her consulting and creative praxis, Golden powers systems, strategies and solutions to advance social justice, cultural wellness, creative emancipation with community organizations, artists, activists, and educators. In 2020, BDAC launched Jupiter Performance Studio, which houses all of the company’s creative and arts education endeavors. Jupiter Performance Studio is a hub for the development, exploration, and production of diasporic Black performance traditions. Instagram: @ebonynoellegolden and @jupiterperformancestudio
