Program Notes for Kaneza Schaal KLII
KLII
Creator & Co-Director
Kaneza Schaal
Design, Co-Director
Christopher Myers
Sound
Camila Ortiz & Ian Askew
Light
Itohan Edoloyi
Dance Consultant
Jonathan Kubakundimana
Recorded Vocals
Kenita Miller, Ian Askew
Technical Director
Cheyanne Williams
Design Associate
James Gibbel
Managing Director
Chelsea Goding
Performers
Kaneza Schaal, Ian Askew, & Sifiso Mabena
Texts: King Leopold’s Soliloquy by Mark Twain, Patrice Lumumba’s 1960 independence speech in Congo, Discourse on Colonialism by Aimé Césaire, monologue by Christopher Myers
Original Lighting Design by Lucrecia Briceno, Asst. Emmanuel Delgado
Special thanks to Amy Cassello, Vallejo Gantner, Daniel Alexander Jones, Tommy Kriegsmann, Kamal Nassif, Naima Ramos-Chapman, Malaika Uwamahoro, Jade Ventura, PAOS GDL and Lorena Peña Brito, and Bea Laszlo.
KLII is a NPN Creation & Development Fund Project co-commissioned by Walker Art Center, Contemporary Arts Center Cincinnati, and REDCAT. KLII was co-commissioned as part of the Eureka Commissions program by the Onassis Foundation.
Director’s Note
I have been thinking about the nature of evil. Today, we look at a figure like King Leopold II with mock horror. His atrocities stun and outrage. However, we rarely look at a figure like Leopold II without the safety of saying he is bad and we are done with him. What of his residue in our everyday lives? And the new Leopolds that emerge every day?
Increasingly our demons are invisible, long hidden racism and misogyny, misinformation, even the virus. How do we handle these threats which are as central to our everyday life as they are hidden.
KLII proposes an exorcism, in theater, starring one of the villains of the 19th century whose actions resonate through the present day. This remixing points towards the flush of revolutionary thought and practice that flooded between black people internationally in the mid 20th century and ignited movements of solidarity between formerly enslaved and colonized peoples around the world. A moment where the looking inward and outward at imperialism and evil mobilized powerful South-South alliances from Cuba to Ethiopia to Senegal to Vietnam to Haiti to Rwanda.
Unless we look at these Leopolds both within us and around us we are doomed to relive their horrors.
– Kaneza Schaal
About the artists
KANEZA SCHAAL works in theater, opera and film, and is based in New York City. Schaal’s work has shown in divergent contexts from NYC basements, to courtyards in Vietnam, to East African amphitheaters, to European opera houses, to US public housing, to rural auditoriums in the UAE. By creating performances that speak many formal, cultural, historical, aesthetic, and experiential languages she seeks expansive audiences. Domestically her work has shown at Brooklyn Academy of Music, LA Philharmonic, The Shed, The Kennedy Center, Walker Art Center, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, REDCAT, The New Victory Theater, New York Live Arts, Performance Space 122, New Orleans Center for Contemporary Art, Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center, PICA, and On The Boards. Schaal received a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship and 2021 Herb Alpert Award in Theatre, as well as a United States Artists Fellowship, SOROS Art Migration and Public Space Fellowship, Ford Foundation Art For Justice Bearing Witness Award, Joyce Award, and Creative Capital Award.
CHRISTOPHER MYERS is an artist and writer whose work across disciplines is rooted in storytelling. Myers delves into the past to build narratives that speak to the slippages between history and mythology. His diverse practice spans textiles, performance, film, and sculptural objects, often created in collaboration with artisans from around the globe. He has worked with traditional shadow puppet makers in Jogjakarta, silversmiths in Khartoum, conceptual video artists in Ho Chi Minh City, young musicians in New Orleans, woodcarvers in Accra, weavers in Luxor, metal workers in Kenya, and textile printers in Copenhagen. These collaborations are driven by his interest in understanding the ways in which globalization is intimately intertwined with notions of self and community.
IAN ANDREW ASKEW is an artist working in music and performance. Their project SLAMDANCE began at Arts @ 29 Garden in 2019 and continued at The Performing Garage in 2021. SLAMDANCE TV, a video component, was premiered by The Kitchen online in 2021. Other performances include Frequency at the Chocolate Factory and love conjure/blues at the A.R.T. As a sound artist collaborating with Camila Ortiz, they have created scores for film, performance, public sculpture, gallery installation, and AR for artists including Christopher Myers, Kaneza Schaal, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Joie Lee, and Kamal Nassif. As an associate director with Kaneza Schaal as well as Zack Winokur and AMOC, Ian has shown work at Lincoln Center, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Detroit Opera.
ITOHAN EDOLOYI is a Brooklyn-born lighting designer whose work is deeply rooted in community and culture. Her work aims to continue storytelling in non-traditional ways, crafting meaningful experiences through the lens of light and immersion. Itohan is the lead curator for InLight Collective, an ongoing project surrounding the amplification of BIPOC voices. She has recently joined Kyle Marshall Choreography company as their resident lighting designer and is also the resident Light Design Coordinator for The Shed’s annual Open Call Series in NYC. Her work as a curator and light artist has been published by Rosco Spectrum and presented at JACK Arts. Itohan was awarded the 2021 Lilly Award and was the recipient of the 2018 Gilbert V. Hemsley Lighting Internship.
SIFISO MABENA is a NY-based, Zimbabwean multidisciplinary theatre maker who is a skilled actor, singer, puppeteer, playwright, and deviser. Her work often explores displacement in diasporic communities, history, identity, and femininity. Riddle of the Trilobites (Flint Rep; New Victory Theatre), Red Hills (En Garde Arts), Art of Luv Part 6 (Abrons), The Sprezzaturameron (BAC), Molly’s Dream (The Public: Fornes Marathon), Shoot Don’t Talk (Labapalooza, St Ann’s Warehouse), Ocean Filibuster (Abrons). International: Winter’s Tale (National Arts Festival, SA), The Comeback (HIFA, ZW), Love in the Time of Malaria (NAF, South Africa). As a playwright, Sifiso has collaborated with The Royal Court Theatre and the British Council (ZW). Her work has been performed at the Harare International Festival of the Arts (Winner HIFADirect 2011), Intwasa Festival and the Chimanimani Festival. More recently Sifiso co-directed The Othello Project for Shake on the Lake and is currently making [sunflower], a show that will premiere in June 2022 at Dixon Place.
CAMILA ORTIZ is a songwriter and sound designer based in New York. Her recent projects include Christopher Myers’ The Art of Taming Wild Horses (2021) for Desert X, Every Voice (2021), an AR installation for the LA Philharmonic, and Kaneza Schaal, Joie Lee, and Jackie Sibblies Drury’s The Healing (2021) for Afrofemenonomy with Performance Space New York. Her piece “Banishing Spell” for a 40-channel speaker diffusion system was premiered in the 2019 Klang! Festival in Montpellier, France. As a solo artist under the moniker Otracami, she is set to release her debut album in summer 2022, and her avant-pop collaboration with Claire Dickson, Myrtle, released their debut album in 2020. Her releases have been featured by NPR’s All Songs Considered and INPUT/OUTPUT magazine.
CHEYANNE WILLIAMS is a theater artist based in New York City, whose transdisciplinary work seeks to expand traditional roles of ‘making’. Irreverent of predetermined roles of theater, Williams has acted in, technical directed, designed, and built shows. Selected performance work includes Kaneza Schaal’s GO FORTH (CAC New Orleans, New Orleans; Wesleyan University, CT) and JACK & (REDCAT, Los Angeles; MCA Chicago, Brooklyn Academy of Music and New York Live Arts, New York). Recent technical collaborations include Technical Direction for Kaneza Schaal’s JACK & (Brooklyn Academy of Music and New York Live Arts, NYC; On The Boards, Seattle; MCA, Chicago). Design work includes Co-Visual Design for The Play Company’s Is It Supposed to Last, Props Design for Big Green Theater and Cute Activist at The Bushwick Starr, as well as Assistant Set Design for Marjana and the 40 Thieves at Target Margin Theater and {mylingerieplay} at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater. BA: Wesleyan University, Theater.
