September 6–8, 2019

A formal presentation on the Divine Ecstasy of St. Teresa of Avila. Forgive the lecturer for being out of sorts, it’s a weirdly stressful subject. Please consider in advance: What makes something sacred? Do you think hallucinations make you feel more lonely or less? Can divine figures be sexy?! There may be a pop quiz!

Free / 50 minutes

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Devised by Sasha Wolfe and Ellen Zahniser Written by Ellen Zahniser Sound by Gem Rosenberg Tech by Molly Hastings

*Content Warning Adult language, some sexual content, mild gore (fake blood), poetic descriptions of self-mutilation/suicide ideation/depression/anxiety

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About the Artists

Sasha Wolfe is a Providence-based performer who studied dance at The New School. Her work uses somatic and environmental information to generate improvised movement, solo and in collaboration with writers and musicians. She has performed at the Vanishing Performance Festival in New Orleans, and two consecutive years at the Providence Fringe Festival, as well as various other DIY shows in Providence, Boston, and New York.

Ellen Zahniser is a Providence-based performer/writer/artist with a BA in Theatre Arts and Performance Studies from Brown. Primarily centering text, sound, and movement, she has performed new works in collaboration or solo at FringePVD 2016-2018, AS220, The Wilbury Group’s Festival of New Works, NYNW Theatre Festival, Spaceus Boston, Vanishing Performance Festival NOLA, and various other majestic locations around New England.

Together, we make work that insists upon saying aloud the things we have been told to keep silent and taking up space in ways we have been shamed out of. Rather than prioritizing “prettiness” and acceptability of product, we focus on process/processing; we strive for an ethic of accountability and care for each other (before care for the audience) by centering the humanity/tenderness/power of all involved, and attempt to embody both a fundamental opposition to white supremacist heteropatriarchy and a collaborative togetherness—which we perceive as being both aesthetically crucial (allowing creativity to grow exponentially in the space between multiple brainbodies) and politically significant (realizing the forms of togetherness that we want the world to be based upon). We engage with disruptions and ghosts, pure intensities and radical capacities, ritual and heightened states in order to enter a space beyond narrow reality where we may encounter disturbed moments of pure aesthetic pleasure and maybe even glimpses of revelation, all while pursuing an agenda of transgressive visioning. Through a lens of queerness, we ultimately imagine creative work that manifests both a future of radiant possibility and a more tenable present.

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