The Future is Present

TFP: Vocal Assembly

The human voice is the center of social and sacred practice. As a vehicle for communication, the voice mediates the world, but the voice is also an incredibly sophisticated instrument that can do so much more than speaking. The VOCAL ASSEMBLY lives inside the possibility of the human voice - in song, chant, laughter, grief. It lives in the open space of improvisation, intimate relation, and collaborative practice as methods for social change.

We need Y.O.U.

Come as you are, no special dress, no theatrical experience needed. Musicians welcome. Singers welcome. Actors welcome. Scientists welcome. Artists welcome. Engineers welcome. Foodies welcome. Introverts welcome. Activists welcome.

Join us.

Raise your voice, bring your ideas, your heart and your creativity.

This is an invitation to members of the MIT community, Ujima Project Boston and the public to join together through art and performance to celebrate and uplift the histories we’ve survived, the stories we’ve forgotten, the words and ideas that hold us together as a collective breath across life-forms and life-times by a loving community.

The fault lines in our world, and the fault lines in our bodies are clearer now than ever before. The last year and a half has forced us all to reconsider what it is we’re doing with our lives, how we’re working meaningfully in our forms, and how we’re taking part in caring for our communities. Vocal Assembly is an experiment in what theater, performance, and music can do right now to address our deep need to cultivate intimacy, communicate across differences, and sing.

FACTS

Timeline: Oct. 4 – Nov 5, 2021

Public Activiations: October 15 AND November 5, 2021

WEEK 1 – 3

We’ll collaborate closely with the Ujima Project Boston, a Black-led, democratic, member-run organization building cooperative business, arts and investment ecosystem in Boston, with a mission to return wealth to working class communities of color. Together we’ll read documents, analyse data, information, and life-nurturing texts.
On Friday, Oct 15th we’ll transform these texts into a 10-hour durational performance using our voices, and presence.

WEEK 4 – 5

MIT members will look closely at the words, ideas and ideologies that make up MIT.
In the 5th week we’ll transform these texts into a 10-hour durational performance using our voices, and presence.
We’ll be improvising with sound, a people’s mic, exploring and creating the environment together.

HOW CAN YOU PARTICIPATE?

Fill out this form. Tell us who you are.

WHAT IS TFP?

The Future is Present is an ongoing creative laboratory bringing together journalists, artists, academics, organizers and young people. Collectively, we interrogate ourselves and our relationships to both historical and contemporary texts as material for co-created experiences of performance and community gathering. TFP has created dinner parties on the history of voter suppression, short films, a collection of songs, an archive of documents that map out possible, equitable, and loving futures - and scripts for community based performances. TFP defines performance broadly and centers the cultivation of intimacy as a necessary and radical act of democratic and liberatory practice. TFP is in the process of making card games that inspire and teach principled forms of disagreement, as well as the VOCAL ASSEMBLY.

CREATIVE TEAM/COLLABORATORS

Janani Balasubramanian, writer/researcher

Charlotte Brathwaite, director + Assoc. Prof. Theater Arts

June Cross, journalist

Sunder Ganglani, dramaturg

Justin Hicks, composer

and Y.O.U.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Look here or contact Charlotte Brathwaite at cbrath@mit.edu

This project is created with support from MIT Center for Art, Science and Technology [CAST]. Brought to you by MIT Theater Arts department.