Minor Music at the End of the World by Saidiya Hartman
The first production of the three elements, Movement I: The End of White Supremacy takes as its point of departure W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Comet, a speculative fictional tale of the end of the world written in the wake of the pandemic of 1918. The work enacts the enduring crisis of black life in the context of racial capitalism, managed depletion, and white supremacy. Against this complexly layered backdrop, Minor Music conveys an ongoing series of catastrophes that converge at this critical inflection point — among others, the arrival of Africans in New York City, the first slave auction in lower Manhattan, the precarity of black life, the pandemics and the environmental catastrophe that make life seemingly unlivable. In doing so, it provokes a series penetrating questions.
Run time tba
Genre Theatre
Language English
World premiere Fri, Oct 3
In Gesprek Sat, Oct 4
Minor Music at the End of the World
“How does one live at the end of the world? Is it possible to envision a world without racism? And what would be required to produce such a world?”
2024 – 2025 is a pivotal moment that highlights the significant historical connection between New York and Amsterdam. Four hundred years ago, in 1624, Dutch colonists founded New Amsterdam on the island of Manahahtáanung— the ancestral home of the Lenape people now known as Manhattan. This event led to the displacement and oppression of Indigenous peoples that predates English colonisation.
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Amsterdam will celebrate its 750th anniversary in 2025. The city and its former sister city New Amsterdam — now New York — share complex and contested histories marked by trade, colonisation and slavery. These histories have profoundly shaped both communities, and they continue to reckon with them today.
A one-night-invitation-only dress rehearsal, the culmination of a year-long series of development workshops, was held in November 2024 at BAM’s Harvey Theater (NY), leading up to a world premiere in Amsterdam in 2025.
Credits
Performers
Lead Performer André Holland
Lead Performer Okwui Okpokwasili
Movement Artist Bria Bacon
Movement Artist Audrey Hailes
Movement Artist AJ Wilmore
Creative
Writer Saidiya Hartman
Director Sarah Benson
Scenic Designer Mimi Lien
Lighting Designers Stacey Derosier and Jane Cox
Live Camera Designer Josh Higgason
Sound Designer Stan Mathabane
Costume Designer Camilla Dely
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Collaborating Artists
Film and Video Artist Arthur Jafa
Installation Artist Precious Okoyomon
Sound Artist and Movement Adviser - Dead River Peter Born
Attendant of the Archive Cameron Rowland
Production
Creative Producer RR Sigel
Production Stage Manager Kasson Marroquin
Associate Director Dante Green
Casting Director Taylor Williams
Executive Producer Tina Campt
Executive Producer Beatrix Ruf