When Saidiya Hartman approached me about her trilogy, now titled Minor Music at the End of the World, the work had already been through several incarnations, including a performance in Ostia, Italy, by Charlotte Brathwaite and Precious Okoyomon. After reading two texts from the trilogy, End of White Supremacy and Litany for Grieving Sisters – I was entirely drawn to Litany for Grieving Sisters. 

Hartman describes the text unfolding “as an exploration of collective grief, love, and resilience, transcending time and space. A/Sister serves as the vessel for shared experiences of grief, love, and resilience, embodying the text of history within the graveyard of societal struggles. Engaged in a centuries-long durational performance of grief, A/Sister navigates the complexities of social death, seeking an escape for herself and all grieving sisters.

Against the backdrop of the graveyard of the world, the narrative explores impossible love amid the enduring struggles of Black Death, culminating in a ceremony for life at the end of the world. ‘Litany for Grieving Sisters’ stands not as an appendix but as an exploration of love’s persistence in a world where life seems to hold no value—a collective utterance echoing the resilience of the human spirit in the face of profound challenges.”

The text demands an eponymous function. We sought to enact the structures, sonic, kinetic, spiritual, for Hartman’s litany. At The Performing Garage in Soho, NYC, for an audience of one, Hartman herself, the research, the practice of the text, and the spiritual inquiry became the performance.

 

CAST & CREATIVE TEAM
Directed by Kaneza Schaal
Written by Saidiya Hartman
Created with Okwui Okpokwasili, Helga Davis
Sound by Rucyl Mills
Stage Management by Lenyn Hernandez Marcia 
Produced by Studio KNZ, RR Siegl 
Minor Music at the End of the World Dramaturgy by Tina Campt

Performed by Amanda Centeno, Amara Granderson, Cecilia Lynn-Jacobs, Helga Davis, Jade Hicks, Kenita Miller-Hicks, Kiara Benn, Marcella Murray, Maya Smoot, Okwui Okpokwasili, Yasmin Pascall, Zurich Delon

 

The Performing Garage, June 12-15, 2024

Development: Princeton University, Mercury Store, Wesleyan University

PHOTO
Christopher Myers & Kaneza Schaal