Credits

Written, Directed, Choreographed and Performed by David Roussève

Dramaturgy by Charlotte Brathwaite
Video design by Meena Murugesan
Sound design by d. Sabela grimes
Lighting design by Christopher Kuhl
Costume design by Leah Piehl
Early-stage dramaturgy by Julie Tolentino 

Technical direction by Christopher Kuhl
Sound and video engineering by Padra Crisafulli
Company management by Leanne Iacovetta Poirier
Additional production support by Gurmukhi Bevli and Harper Justus 
Management and producorial support by George Lugg

Collaborators

CHARLOTTE BRATHWAITE – DRAMATURGY (she) is an award-winning artist and director whose genre-defying works illuminate the realities and dreams of those whose stories have been silenced or ignored. Working at the intersection of dance, theater, music, film, ritual, and installation, her practice centers storytelling as a site of resistance, remembrance, and radical possibility. She began her artistic journey as a dancer—foundational experiences that continue to shape her movement- and music-driven storytelling. Brathwaite has created work alongside Meshell Ndegeocello, adrienne maree brown, Kyle Abraham, Peter Sellars, Malick Welli, and currently collaborates as dramaturg for David Roussève/REALITY. Her performances, films, and photography have been presented internationally at the Holland Festival, Park Avenue Armory, The Shed, Baryshnikov Arts Center, HAU Berlin, La MaMa, the Whitney Museum, and 1-54 Marrakech. She is the recipient of awards from the Doris Duke Foundation, United States Artists, Creative Capital, the Princess Grace Foundation, and others. Brathwaite holds an MFA from Yale. She is also an educator and Co-Founding Director of Malidoma Popenguine, a space for art and community in Senegal. www.charlottebrathwaite.com

MEENA MURUGESAN – VIDEO DESIGN (they) are an interdisciplinary artist based on Tongva-Kizh land, colonially known as Los Angeles. Meena creates art installations at the intersection of video art, textile art, live performance, and social issues. Their work grapples with multimedia collage, contemplative documentary, textile art, improvisation, somatic bodywork, collective creation, and brahminized bharatanatyam. Meena centers an anti-racist, anti-caste, feminist, queer, land back, liberatory creative practice. They research interlocking systems of apartheid - across caste, race, gender, religion, ethnicity, and species - to interrogate hierarchical structures of power. This inquiry informs their current project, Dravidian Futurities, a speculative multimedia installation examining Dravidian-African connections, casteism, colorism, trance rituals, and the ancient submerged landmass of Kumari Kandam / Lemuria. Meena’s solo work has been supported through grants and artist residencies, including The Mellon Foundation, CHIME, Pieter, UCLA, Canada Council for the Arts, CALQ and SODEC. Their video art has been presented at The Getty Museum, Broad Museum, MOCA LA, BlackStar Film Festival, 651 Arts, Jacob’s Pillow, SOPHIENSÆLE, Underground Museum, REDCAT, ODC, Abrons Arts Center, NYLA, EMPAC, ICA Philadelphia, MCA Chicago, Danspace, Wesleyan University, UCLA, Tangente, and MAI, among others. www.vimeo.com/meenakshi

D. SABELA GRIMES – ORIGINAL SOUND (he) is a choreographer, transmedia storyteller, writer, composer, costume designer, and educator. His interdisciplinary practice centers improvisation and collaboration, drawing from Black and Afro-diasporic vernacular, Hip Hop, street, and social dance traditions. He is the creator of Funkamental MediKinetics, a movement system taught at USC’s Glorya Kaufman School of Dance, where he also teaches composition, dance histories, and fashion and materiality. Sabela’s work explores the poetics of assemblage, speculative practice, and Black cultural epistemologies across performance, visual media, and sound. He co-directs Parable of Portals with Meena Murugesan, a transmedia performance constellation inspired by the writings of Octavia E. Butler. He is a 2023 USC Associates Award for Artistic Expression recipient, a 2021 Bessie Award recipient for Outstanding Performer, a 2017 County of Los Angeles Performing Arts Fellow, and a 2014 United States Artists Rockefeller Fellow. Sabela loves pancakes, speculative fiction, and his kinfolk.

CHRISTOPHER KUHL – LIGHTING DESIGN and TECHNICAL DIRECTION (he) Christopher Kuhl is an acclaimed theater, dance, opera, installation artist and designer. He has developed work which has been produced and presented at Santiago a Mil Chile, Queer Zagreb, Sydney Festival, Hebbel am Ufer, Centre Pompidou, Hong Kong Arts Festival, Edinburgh International Festival, On the Boards, Fusebox Festival, Walker Arts Center, Sundance Film Festival, and Santa Fe Opera, among others. Recent work includes Trade / Mary Motorhead (Prototype Festival, LA Opera, REDCAT), Human Measure (HOME Manchester, Canadian Stage), Confederates (Oregon Shakespeare Festival), The Carolyn Bryant Project (REDCAT), Voices from the Killing Jar (Long Beach Opera, Los Angeles Philharmonic), The Hunger (Abbey Theatre, BAM), The Object Lesson (New York Theatre Workshop), Home (BAM), The Institute of Memory (Under the Radar), Straight White Men (Young Jean Lee’s Theatre Company, The Public Theatre, Kaai Theater), John Cage Song Books (San Francisco Symphony, Carnegie Hall), and Soldier Songs (Holland Festival). His work has been recognized with three Bessie Awards, two Los Angeles Ovation Awards, and the Center Theatre Group’s Sherwood Award. Kuhl is an Associate Professor at UC San Diego in the Department of Theatre and Dance. He is from New Mexico and a graduate of California Institute of the Arts.

LEAH PIEHL – COSTUME DESIGN (she) is an award winning costume designer working in film, television, and theater. She holds an MFA in Costume Design from California Institute of the Arts and a BA in Political Economy from UC Berkeley. Theater and art credits include Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Mark Taper Forum, Pasadena Playhouse, Redcat, South Coast Rep, BAM, Geffen Playhouse, Centre Pompidou Paris, ArtBasel Miami, and the Whitney Biennial. Leah is a member of Motion Picture Costumers Local 705 and United Scenic Artists Local 829.

JULIE TOLENTINO – EARLY DRAMATURGY (she/they) is an interdisciplinary artist working in durational performance, installation, scent & object-making, texts. Her work has been exhibited in the 2022 Whitney Biennial (with Ivy Kwan Arce), Participant, Inc., The Kitchen, Performance Space New York, The New Museum, Aspen Art Museum, Nevada Art Museum, Thessaloniki Biennial, Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), Museum of Contemporary Art – Macedonia, Commonwealth & Council, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Volume, Fulcrum Arts, homeLA, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, The Lab (SF) amongst others. Collaborative projects include Visual AIDS Duets Book series with Kia LaBeija; Movements in Blue with the What Would An HIV Doula Do? Collective; and the Safer Sex Handbook with Cynthia Madansky. Tolentino initiated and ran the Clit Club from 1990-2002. She is the current senior editor for the Provocations in TDR – The Drama Review (since 2012). They received a MFA as the University of California at Riverside’s Dean’s Distinguished Fellow in Experimental Choreography in 2020. 

PADRA CRISAFULLI – SOUND AND VIDEO ENGINEER (they) creates theatrical experiences as a sound designer, composer, director, and generative artist, and is most energized when mixing the unexplainable with the unavoidable. Past productions have been seen at: Japan Society NY, Playwrights Horizons, La Jolla Playhouse, Park Avenue Armory, National Museum of Serbia, Prague Quadrennial, and Edinburgh Fringe Festival. They are a Hæth Grant recipient through Possum Creek Games, an IDEAS grant recipient through Qualcomm Institutes, and were awarded the Triangle Rainbow Theatre and the Riant's Best Director Award for their online work.. MFA in Sound, UC San Diego. BFA in Directing, Carnegie Mellon University.

GEORGE LUGG – MANAGEMENT & PRODUCORIAL SUPPORT (he) is a producer, curator and consultant who has been working in the field of contemporary performance for more than 30 years. He currently works for David Roussève/REALITY and Emily Johnson / Catalyst, and served as a consulting producer for CalArt Center for New Performance from 2019–2024. His active projects include the world premiere and touring of David Roussève’s Becoming Daddy AF, and Emily Johnson’s Speculative Architecture of the Overflow, scheduled to premiere at REDCAT in Los Angeles in fall of 2026. Other recent projects include Emily Johnson’s Being Future Being (2022); Daniel Alexander Jones’ Altar no. 1 (2021); Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol’s El Camino Donde Nosotros Lloramos (The Road Where We Weep) (2020); Faye Driscoll’s Come On In (2020); Faye Driscoll’s Thank You For Coming: Space (2019); the Zhigaagoong/Chicago edition of Emily Johnson’s Then a Cunning Voice and A Night We Spend Gazing at Stars (2019), among others. He served twice as Lead Program Consultant in the Performing Arts for the Creative Capital Foundation (2020 & 2012), as a Hub Site Representative for New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project (2012–14), and on the U.S. curatorial teams for the National Performance Network’s Performing Arts Asia Project (2011) and Performing Americas Project (2009–10).