THE WORTHY – JUNETEENTH
June 11 & June 19 – 2022 (African Burial Ground, Lower Manhattan and The Flea Theater, New York)
by Niegel Smith
featuring Talu Green, Temesgen Tocruray, and Kyra Davis
Join Artistic Director Niegel Smith, an afro-futuristic griot, on a Juneteenth walk exploring our city through the lens of liberation, black love, queer joy, and community healing. Co-led by Talu Green with his commanding Djembe drumming, The Worthy will take you through the African Burial Ground Monument, past civic buildings and through the streets of lower Manhattan as we consider the worth of Black and Queer folks. We’ll use the monument as a space for contemplation and ritual. We’ll journey to public sculptures and respond to poetic prompts. And, joined by two dancer actors, we’ll walk through the street as joyful resistance. The Walk will conclude at The Flea theater with a video installation and liberation libation in our back patio where you can hang, meet the artists and hear more about their work and inspiration.
Please join me on a walk for just a few, maybe four…
No more.
For
This
Is an intimate contemplation on
Justice
Resilience
Worth (Street)
And
Beautiful Black Men
‘Cause
It’s Juneteenth
And I’m Finally Free
Click here to purchase your tickets for June 11 or 19, 2022
Arden – But, Not Without You
Feb 6 – Mar 13, 2022 (The Flea Theater, New York)
By Peter Born, Diana Oh, Okwui Okpokwasili, Niegel Smith and Carrie Mae Weems
Directed by Nia Witherspoon & Niegel Smith
“If all that co-directors Smith and Nia Witherspoon had told the cast was “just do your thing and do it like your life depended on it,” that was certainly enough to bring these talents to the fever pitch that eventually exploded out into this indescribable experience.”
– Christopher Caz, Manhattan Digest
“Arden feels like a poem, an ode to new beginnings, a ritual to solemnize a space, and a group embrace. The performers let us in, open their arms, feed off our energy, and offer us blessings. Together, we can hopefully leave more at peace and bask in this much-transformed version of the Flea.”
– Christian Lewis, Theatermania
Commissioned by The Flea, Arden: But, Not Without You is raw, vibrant, and QUEER AS F*CK. Don’t miss this genre-bending new work.
Diana Oh describes Arden as “Four Generations of Deeply Intimately Bound All-Kinds-of-Doing-Shit Artists sharing of themselves in a Tender-Ass Room full of Queer Femme Shamanic Energy who Genuinely and Gently Welcome You: Social Anxieties, Yummy Freakiness, and All.”
Okwui adds: “We assume nothing. We know nothing, other than a shared desire to reach out and learn about how little we have known and how much we assume. We bring each other offerings and practices and we ask people to come and join us in these offerings. Can we come together in this spirit? There will be music, there will be dance, there might be a party. You bring what you can, we will hold a space for it.”
And Diana brings it all back, “When the world be moving so fast, and I be so gentle, this is the room I wanna be in.”
Come as you are.
Click here to purchase your tickets for Feb 6 – Mar 13, 2022
Refrigerated Dreams
October 27, 2018 (Joe’s Pub, New York)
Directed and co-created by Niegel Smith
Nona Hendryx created Refrigerated Dreams, an immersive multimedia installation and concert transforming Joe’s Pub into the dinner party of the season. Inspired by Carrie Mae Weems’s seminal The Kitchen Table Series, the work-in-progress is directed by Niegel Smith and features choreography and performances by Francesca Harper, Josh Johnson and The Francesca Harper Project, with original music by Nona Hendryx.
From the first message announcing Refrigerated Dreams, the audience enters a world of binaries: man or woman, black or white, stay or go. In that first email, a man invites you to a dinner party, for which he has secured Nona Hendryx and her performance art band Anon as the entertainment. But lurking behind him are the images from The Kitchen Table Series. In a way, they are asking, what’s going on in the kitchen; what’s the backstory? Missing from the dinner table is ‘The Man,’ performed by Josh Johnson and ‘The Woman,’ performed by Harper. Where is she? Is she coming? Will she break out of the heteronormative?
Click here to purchase your tickets for Oct 27, 2018.
Flea Fridays
Oct 12 & 19, 2018 – How Color Brave Are You? (The Flea Theater, New York)
Jan 26, 2018 – How Will We Let Our Freedom Ring? (The Flea Theater, New York)
Dec 15, 2018 – How Do We Nurture Blackness? (The Flea Theater, New York)
FLEA FRIDAYS is an immersive cabaret in residence in The Flea’s indoor/outdoor theater The Pete. Each one features some of downtown’s most daring artists, who invite audiences to engage with our most pressing social questions.
Co-curated and Directed by Niegel Smith.
Click here to purchase your tickets for Oct 12 & 19, 2018.
Click here to purchase your tickets for Dec 15 – Jan 26, 2018.
Take Care
Dec 1, 2015 – Jan 25, 2016 (The Flea Theater, New York)
Written by Todd Shalom & Niegel Smith. Directed by Niegel Smith.
Take Care is a participatory performance that investigates the ways we respond to present and imminent danger. This evening-length performance gathers and reconfigures our personal language around emergency preparedness, abandonment, and consolation.
Take Care includes individualized prompts for audience participation alongside scripted moments for The Bats, the resident acting company at The Flea. Audiences will have the opportunity to choose their desired level of participation—they can be on stage or around it.
““Take Care,” a willfully weird, highly interactive theater piece that uses a series of playful but ominous sketches and games to explore nervous-making aspects of the world today.”
– Charles Isherwood, The New York Times
Click here to purchase your tickets for Dec 1, 2015 – Jan 25, 2016
Dream State of Affairs
Jan 29 – 31, 2015
By Todd Shalom & Niegel Smith
Presented by The Invisible Dog Art Center in partnership with Elastic City
For our ten year artnership, we’ve scored a performance: a where-we-are but in your shoes. There are written prompts that overlap–a set of tasks that form a fairy tale weee invite you to complete.
We’ll play with race, lust, consent, underpaid labor and childhood shit; the cat and the meow. You’ve a choice: consent to be on stage or around it, as you will. We will take care of you.
The Arts Board Member and Development Director: Erin Markey
Lighting Design: Amith Chandrashaker
Stage Management: Ana Mari de Quesada
Rigging Consultant: Jon Harper
This work was created, in part, with a space grant from BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange with support from the New York State Council on the Arts, the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Rehearsal: The Perils of Obedience
July 10 – 11, 2014 (Abrons Arts Center, NYC)
Created By Itziar Barrio and Directed By Niegel Smith
As the next part of THE PERILS OF OBEDIENCE, a long-term project that researches power and its diverse embodiments, Itziar Barrio mixes performance, theater, film and live experience to confront established sets of rules and cultivate the conditions for unscripted consequences.THE PERILS OF OBEDIENCE is inspired by Stanley Milgram’s 1961 psychological experiments. In this project four characters are immersed in power dynamics within the same scene and an endless conflict.
In continuing collaboration with theater director Niegel Smith, Rehearsal TPO generates a narrative by placing the cast in specific roles and situations where power is contested, performed, and analyzed. The audience will witness the working process of a rehearsal, designed as a performance and where the entire process will be recorded and edited for a final video piece. The four participating actors were selected in the previous stage of the project, Casting THE PERILS OF OBEDIENCE, presented at the Abrons Arts Center in March 2013. Following an open call, the selection process was exposed to the audience, who could experience the excitement and seduction of an audition.
Eat Me, Drink Me, Homo
July 27 & 28, 2013 @ 2pm
Written and Directed by Niegel Smith
Featuring Jamyl Dobson and Jax Jackson
Produced by JACK & Brooklyn International Performance Art Festival
As a young gay in a Catholic all-boy’s high school, I was often reminded of my outsider’s perspective. But, when communion, a sacrament in which only practicing Catholics (and I have never been one) are supposed to participate, was celebrated at an all school mass, I just couldn’t help myself. I had to join in. Breaking bread. Sharing wine. And muttering Latin phrases. It was the best kind of community performance – an opportunity to transcend our individuality and draw closer through shared experience. So now I invite you to leave the rigid confines of organized religion and join in an intimate walk outside. You’ll be lead in a heightened sensory experience as you share new texts, create ritual gestures and mold the outside into your sanctuary. But, don’t forget to say your prayers, things might get rough when you try to get a little bit closer.
I’m A Nigga
July 3, 2013
Conceived and Performed by Niegel Smith
Produced by VoxFest / Vox Barter and presented by The Hood Museum
In, I’m a Nigga, Niegel Smith appropriates contemporary gallery codes, the ubiquitous Apple text speaking program and American hip-hop and rap lyrics in order to question how we use media to subject ourselves to viewership and objectification. The artist takes a classical pose sitting on a stool, his laptop sits on a stool next to him and throughout the performance, a pre-recorded description of the artist is performed by his macintosh computer. The description is an adaptation, written by the artist, of 50 Cent’s “Poor Lil Rich”.
Casting The Perils of Obedience
Mar 29 & 30, 2013 (Abrons Arts Center, NYC)
Created By Itziar Barrio and Directed By Niegel Smith
Cabin Fever
March 23, 2012 (Brooklyn, NY)
Conceived and performed by Niegel Smith at the artist’s home
so you’re one of them now
March 17th & 18th, 2009 (The Public Theater; New York, NY)
Todd Shalom & Niegel Smith as PERMISO
This performance debuted as “untitled” in the basement laundry room of the Public Theater in Manhattan. Participants were invited to join the artists in groups of two every 20 minutes. As the evening went on, the performance evolved and the ‘older’ participants taught the ‘newbies’ how to engage with the work. Fiercely physical and emotionally unbounded, “so you’re one of them now” engaged participants in the play and uncertainty when sequestered in a space with uncensored artists. The title was taken from a participant’s mouth at the end of the final performance.
this was the only place I knew to go
April 2008 (Brooklyn, NY)
Todd Shalom & Niegel Smith as PERMISO
“this was the only place I knew to go” was performed inside the bathrooms of Galapagos, a music/art venue in Brooklyn. We enlisted non-actors to expose their most intimate secrets with an unassuming public and to start a dialogue from within the stalls.
Associate Director: Andrea Williams
Performers: Jarah Moesch, David Shaenfield, Shannan Shaughnessy, Andrea Williams
December 31
December 31, 2007 (Buenos Aires, Argentina)
Niegel Smith in collaboration with Todd Shalom as PERMISO
Outside Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires Todd Shalom and Niegel Smith scratched personal reflections and offerings from the previous year on sheets of paper, read those thoughts aloud, burned the papers and walked away.
Processional (2007)
May 2007 (Union Square, New York)
Todd Shalom & Niegel Smith as PERMISO
For Processional (2007), we led a silent walk in concentric circles around Manhattan’s Union Square in memory of those killed in the Virginia Tech shooting and the Iraq War. For 40 minutes, we spoke solely with the mass movement of our bodies and interrupted the public space to offer a moment of reflection and community through shared experience.
Participants: Jamyl Dobson, Kim Hamlin, Todd Shalom and Niegel Smith.
Fallout
September 11, 2006 (New York, NY)
Todd Shalom and Niegel Smith as PERMISO
On September 11, 2006, there was an official ceremony in downtown Manhattan to remember those affected by the attack on the World Trade Center. Four blocks away (at the tip of Bowling Green Park) unheard voices emerged in a performace at Arturo DiMoica’s “Charging Bull” sculpture. “Fallout” used the live radio broadcast of the official ceremony as its score.
Performers: Christian Croft, Sarah Edgar, Natalia Ivanova, Tiffany Jewel, Jared Ray, Todd Shalom, Niegel Smith and Jonathan Tindle