A DEVISED ENVIRONMENTAL OPERA INSTALLATION
59th St + Bush Terminal Piers Park, Brooklyn
2021
GROUNDS is a new performance fusing devised theater, opera, immersive installation, and site-specific art that intervenes in public space. Experimental director Jennifer Williams teams up with International Contemporary Ensemble to create this interactive public ritual of healing for the South Brooklyn community. Retelling New York’s history through an inclusive feminist lens, this environmental opera installation illuminates female-identifying history-makers from Brooklyn, including Shirley Chisholm, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Emma Stebbins, and Emily Warren Roebling. Devised from archival letters and ephemera, this onsite, socially-distanced public ritual is tailored to Bush Terminal Piers Park and 59th Street’s unique topographies. Upending traditional linear narrative forms, it deconstructs history into a constellation of synchronous, immersive experiences, pushing the boundaries of the present and the corporeal. Free to the public, GROUNDS is an interactive community ritual that dispels isolation, rebuilds connectivity, and amplifies community identity by celebrating the resilient spirit that makes Brooklyn extraordinary.
Concept, Creative Director + Executive Producer / Jennifer Williams
Installation Designer / Jungah Han
Costume Designer / Asa Benally
Assistant Set Designer + Technical Director / Žilvinas Jonušas
Cast / Raquel Acevedo Klein, Isabel Lepanto Gleicher, Rebekah Heller, IONE, Shara Lunon, Clara Warnaar
Photography / Lucas Godlewski
Graphic Design / Eva Parr
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GROUNDS is a recipient of Brooklyn Arts Council’s Brooklyn Arts Fund and Local Arts Support grants, as well as a Restart NY grant. This project is made possible with funds from the Statewide Community Regrants Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and also sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, both administered by Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC).