The Ships In The Night

www.theshipsinthenight.com
2020-2022
New London County, CT

Ideated and collaboratively produced with Jessica Cerullo

The Ships in the Night is a living archive and performance project that reclaims and reframes the pandemic experiences of community members in New London County, Connecticut. The project manifests as a series of co-authored poems, one-on-one performances, a public performative lecture, a community walk, a book, a series of intimate conversations, and a living archive. Conceived and ideated with New London County artist Jessica Cerullo, the project invites audiences and co-authors of the project, to participate in the work of re-imagining a future that is ripe with opportunities for connection, creation, and collective meaning making.

Inspired by a line in a Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem, The Ships in the Night references what happens when ships unexpectedly pass in the night and shine a light to announce their presence. Using her attention as a beacon, my collaborator Jessica Cerullo met one-on-one with strangers in her community and created an on the spot performance using only the words of and the community members she interviewed. With participant permission, she sent transcriptions of the interviews and performative poems to me. Together we further edited each poem and created instructional prompts for future listeners/readers.

The performances, activations, community dialogs and re-enactments that followed brought together this varied group of diverse participants and amplified their experiences to local and international audiences. Ongoing engagement with the living archive of poems and interview transcripts through activation exercises, and readings formulates pathways that enable the stories to circulate through the communities and the individuals and organizations that comprise it.

PUBLICATION NOW AVAILABLE: The project poems and instructional activations are available as a printed book. Some Strangers Somewhere (named after our first performative activation of these poems) is produced by Lightrail Press, 2023. More project information is also available below and on the project website: www.theshipsinthenight.com

Select performance and event information below. Photographs above by Sean D. Elliot during the “Some Stranger Somewhere” Book Launch

Four Beacons: A Performative Lecture

May 19, 2022 at 6-7:30p
La Grua Art Center & Stonington Historical Society.
Stonington, CT

Four Beacons was a performative lecture and participatory event that gathered together community members from New London, Connecticut to collectively embody memory as an act of resistance. The event featured a living archive of more than 60 poems titled, The Ships in the Night. The poems were created by Jessica Cerullo and a stranger during one-on-one exchanges during which the stranger broke through the isolation of these times to proclaim, whisper and share what they want their community to remember. Jessica and I ideated these projects together choosing coastal Connecticut as it’s site; I served as poem editor, social choreographer, dramaturge and weaver, connecting these individual exchanges and poems to our broader collective experiences through events and activations.

On Thursday May 19, 2022 we activated these poems. The event included a lecture, a simultaneous choral reading of all sixty-six poems and community walk to the nearby Stonington Historical Society lighthouse. On the shore near the lighthouse poems were offered through intimate small group readings by the following co-authors: Nazariah Isaac, Nuriyah Richardson, José O. Rivera, Sydney Schueki, Jill Adams, Alison Taylor, Patrick Sheehan Gaumer and others. Participants then installed the entire living archive into Stonington Historical Society, five local public libraries and the Connecticut College Archive where the individual stories can continue to be engaged. Through this experience strangers from varied backgrounds choose to engage in small acts of repair and liberatory radical imaginings.

The Four Beacons experience was directed and performed by Jessica Cerullo and I featuring Chloe Kolbenheyer and original music played live by Gary Grundei. Project collaborator, Eastern Pequot Tribal Councilor La' Tasha Maddox offered a land acknowledgement and blessing.

This project is supported by the Stonington Historical Society and La Grua Arts Center. The Ships in the Night is produced in collaboration with Waterford, Groton, Mystic and Noank, and Stonington Free Libraries; Artreach; OutCT; The Lighthouse Disability Support and Services: UCFS Health Care; More Than Words: Inter-High School Diversity Club; Thames Valley Council for Community Action Senior Volunteer Program, and Trillium Garden Club. The Ships in the Night living archive loose leaf book was designed by David Schulz and copy edited by Lisa Birman.