September 1, 2, and 3 * doors at 7, performances start at 730 * in the backyard * TICKETS
"...one of the most profound shows DC theater has to offer." -DC Theater Arts
An interactive solo performance in poetry by 2022 Washington Award winner Fargo Nissim Tbakhi, My Father, My Martyr, and Me asks audiences to engage in the project of unlearning the criminality always already layered onto the Palestinian body. Using an invented method called “unarcheology” to examine the performer’s life, his father’s life, and the life of Sirhan Sirhan, the performance seeks to decolonize possibilities for solidarity, support, and love towards the survival of the Palestinian people. Staged on and around a large pile of dirt, the performance uses a nonlinear, queer, decolonial approach to text and to aesthetics to ultimately ask: in the face of decades of colonization, erasure, and colonization, how can we love each other better?
My Father, My Martyr, and Me was originally performed at the Empty Space Theater at ASU, directed by Jennifer Linde. It has subsequently been performed, programmed, or showcased at the Helen K. Mason Performing Arts Center with support from the Arizona Commission on the Arts, OUTsider Fest, Intersection Solo Fest, Western Washington University, the Rachel Corrie Foundation's Shuruq Festival, Capital Fringe Festival, and the Western States Communication Association Conference.
Fargo Nissim Tbakhi is a queer Palestinian performance artist, a Taurus, and a cool breeze.
Opening performance Friday September 1 by niki afsar.
Opening performance Saturday September 2 by Jessica Valoris.
Opening performance Sunday September 3 by leena aboutaleb.
niki afsar is a nonbinary/femme, iranian-american writer and interdisclipinary artist. since 2015 they have lived and worked in new york city, tehran, the washington dc area, and western massachusetts. their work explores ideas of fluidity and longing within language, hybrid/myriad identities, and mental health. they experiment with a number of mediums including devised movement and performance; poetry and text; live singing and sound making; and mirror work.
Jessica Valoris is an interdisciplinary artist and community facilitator based in Washington, DC. She weaves together mixed media painting, installation, ritual performance and social practice, to create sacred spaces. Her art activates ancestral wisdom, personal reflection, and community study. Inspired by the earth-based traditions of her Black American and Jewish ancestry, Jessica engages metaphysics, spirituality, and Afrofuturism in her work. Her art is both balm and blueprint: mapping out pathways for the Black liberatory imagination and reviving recipes for collective care. Jessica collaborates with organizers and cultural workers to facilitate community rituals of remembrance and conversations about reparations, abolition, earth-stewardship, and more. Jessica is currently a Culture and Narrative Fellow with The Opportunity Agenda and a recipient of the Washington Award from S&R Evermay. She has completed fellowships with VisArts Studio Fellowship, Public Interest Design Lab, Intercultural Leadership Institute, and Halcyon Arts Lab. Iterations of her recent body of work, Black Fugitive Folklore, have been shown at the Phillips Collection, The Kreeger Museum, Africana Film Festival, The REACH at the Kennedy Center, VisArts and Brentwood Arts Exchange.
leena aboutaleb is an Egyptian and Palestinian writer. Her writing appears in Third Text, Mizna, LIFTA Volumes, Strange Horizons, FIYAH Lit Magazine, The Boiler, and others. Her pamphlet ‘Expeditions of Projection’ was released in 2023 by VIBE.