“FORCE! is an opera, but what is an opera? If opera means ‘big work,’ what could be blacker? In this big work, characters become fractals for the abundant relationships blooming in the shadows of the state and carceral power. In this big work, a constellation imagines a strange sisterhood with the power to disintegrate walls.” —Anna Martine Whitehead

Since late 2019, FORCE! has developed as an iterative re-imagining of performance practice, constantly re-centering care, consent, queer divergence, and rest. The FORCE! constellation re-imagines rehearsal protocols and lets loose discipline to build an abolition feminist theatre practice. This project gathers lessons from lichens, direct actions, mutual aid societies, and other emergent strategies to leverage sound and movement as vectors for processing state violence and racial capitalism. As audiences travel with performers through space, sound, and silence, the boundaries between them become increasingly less important. Using the prison as a particular prism through which we can bear witness to the ways carceral systems replicate themselves, FORCE! is also an attempt to abolish the Prison Industrial Complex in our heads, hearts, and houses.

Co-composers: Angel Bat Dawid, Ayanna Woods, Anna Martine Whitehead. Music Direction: Ayanna Woods, Teiana Davis. Dancers: Jenn Po’Chop Freeman, Zachary Nicol, Rahila Coats. Musicians: Eva Supreme, Daniella Pruitt, Nexus J, Kai Black, Wyatt Waddell, Teiana Davis. Costume Designer: Sky Cubacub.