Charlene Jean & Bryanna Bradley & Courtney Bryan Devon

USA

Charlene Jean fuses Haitian heritage and ritual in multidisciplinary works.

Bryanna Bradley explores identity through dance, theater, and performance art.

Courtney Bryan Devon creates transformative arts experiences centered on storytelling, justice, and joy.

Shit In The Blood

Artist Notes

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Charlene Jean & Bryanna Bradley & Courtney Bryan Devon Transcript for Shit In The Blood

“Butterfly, Butterfly…”

We hear some horns.
We hear an ESPN reporter saying “We losing recipes! And now we gonna lose!”

We hear crunching noises, and then “wade in the water” in a deep, distorted voice.

The song then goes to a distorted voice singing the lyrics to Home by the Wiz:

“When I think of Home, I think of a place where there is love overflowing…”

We hear a heart beat, the voice gets lower “I wish I was back there with the things I’ve been knowing. Winds that make the tall tress bend into leaning…”

Charlene Jean & Bryanna Bradley & Courtney Bryan Devon

Charlene Jean & Bryanna Bradley & Courtney Bryan Devon

Biography

 

Charlene Jean is trained in the methodology of BLACK LISTENING via Avery R. Young and the Poetry Foundation’s Inaugural O|Sessions. She is a 2022 MAP Grant Fund awardee, a finalist providing eligibility for the 2023/2024 Creative Capital WILD FUTURES award, a Semi-finalist at Barbara Ann Teer’s National Black Theatre’s 2023 SOUL SERIES: I Am Soul – Playwright’s Residency, with multidisciplinary works presented at Weeksville Heritage Center, Harlem Film House, Mother New York, International Society of Curational Programming, and now JACKS Radical Acts Festival. Charlene Jean is Haitian on both sides. She thanks her collaborator, Bryanna, for being that girl. You is it. Thank you to the Lwa who walk with me. Thank you, Gabriel Antonio White, my husband.

Bryanna Bradley (she/they) is a Long Island born (Matinecock) and Southeast Queens (Lekawe/Lenape) bred multidisciplinary performer with a Berkshires Massachusetts (Mohican) twang. Her work lives at the intersection of dance, theater, and performance art. Bryanna has the distinct ability to be raw, unfettered, and instinctual with clarity, precision, and focus. As a dancer, she trained with Urban Bush Women at The School at Jacob’s Pillow and shadowed Camille A. Brown through her Black Girl Spectrum Program. As an actor, she was a lead performer in 2022 MacArthur Fellow Tavares Strachan’s Spring 2022 exhibition The Awakening at the New York Marian Goodman Gallery. As a performance artist, her debut performance work buck, an exploration of black masculinity, premiered in visual artist Nick Cave’s exhibition Until at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA). Bryanna is eternally grateful for Charlene Jean, the doll, and our ancestors.

Courtney Bryan Devon (they/them) is a Black, Queer, nonbinary Theatremaker, Somatic Healer, and Arts Educator. Through their work, Courtney creates revealing, reviving and revolutionary experiences rooted in facilitation, fellowship, and freedom. Cultivating an eclectic arts education that is continually reinvested into marginalized communities as a teaching artist, Courtney proudly serves as the Rosetta LeNoire Academy director at Amas Musical Theatre and Education Committee presenter for the 2023 Shakespeare Theatre Association international conference. Courtney is most enlivened in enriching and connecting communities through creativity, believing in the universal power of the arts and storytelling to facilitate environments of learning, healing, transformative justice, and radical joy.

Black Listening's website front page header art and Obsidian 49.2 cover art were  created by Nettrice Gaskins

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