Minor Music at the End of the World
Minor Music at the End of the World adapts for the stage Saidiya Hartman’s acclaimed essays “The End of White Supremacy” and “Litany for Grieving Sisters.” This new work 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.
Featuring Andre Holland, Okwui Okpokwasili and film by Arthur Jafa. Commissioned and presented by Hartwig Art Foundation
Run time 110 min (no intermission)
Genre Theatre
Language English (with Dutch surtitles)
World premiere Fri, Oct 3
After talk Sun, Oct 5
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 create such a world?
Minor Music is presented in three movements:
Movement I: The End of White Supremacy - Featuring Andre Holland
Movement II: Dead River - Featuring Okwui Okpokwasili, with Bria Bacon, Audrey Hailes, and AJ Wilmore
Movement III: The World is Dead - A film by Arthur Jafa
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, global pandemics, and environmental catastrophes that make life seemingly unlivable. In doing so, it provokes a series of penetrating questions about black life at the end of the world and the new social formations that arise in its wake. Directed by Sarah Benson, Minor Music at the End of the World features cinematic elements by Arthur Jafa, lead performances by actor André Holland and actor/sonic movement artist Okwui Okpokwasili. Minor Music is an evening-length performance presented without intermission.
Sun Oct 5
Aftertalk
On Sunday, there will be a aftertalk with Saidiya Hartman, Sarah Benson, Okwui Okpokwasili, André Holland a.o, moderated by Rita Ouédraogo and Tina Campt. This after talk will take place at The Bookshop and is free to attend.
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
Costume Designers Camilla Dely and Celeste Jennings
Lighting Designers Stacey Derosier and Jane Cox
Live Camera Designer Josh Higgason
Sound Designer Stan Mathabane
Movement in Dead River developed by Okwui Okpokwasili in collaboration with performers Bria Bacon, Audrey Hailes, and AJ Wilmore
Collaborating Artists
Film and Video Artist Arthur Jafa
Installation Artist Precious Okoyomon
Sound Artist Dead River - Peter Born
Attendant of the Archive Cameron Rowland
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Production
Creative Producer RR Sigel
Production Stage Manager Kasson Marroquin
Associate Director Dante Green
Production Manager Maciej Lewandowski
Camera Operators Attilio Rigotti and Emi Grady-Willis
Casting Director Taylor Williams
Scenic Design Assistant Jason Lajka
Lighting Design Assistant Tess James
Sound Design Assistant Dante Green
Precious Okoyomon Tree Sculpture fabricated by Espace Aygo, Rae Blooms, Flower Studio
Costume construction by William Andrew Young, Athene Wright, Jasmine Lewis
Millinery Samuel Broome Uniform Accessories
Consulting Production Manager Brian Freeland
Executive Producer Tina Campt
Executive Producer Beatrix Ruf
Dutch Script Translator Pelumi Adejumo
Copy Editor Tessa van Dooren
Cultural Consultant Rita Ouedraogo
Short Film featuring Okwui Okpokwasili
Directed by Arthur Jafa
AC Sammy Leonard
Key Grip Alphonse Silvestri
Gaffer Che Roacher
Studio Assistant Atheel Elmalik
Color Correction Kyungchan Min, Color Collective
Equipment Rentals Brooklyn Lighting & Grip, Hand Held Films, Lightbulb Rentals
Photos - Maria Baranova
Special Thanks
Special Thanks
Bernard Schwartz, Andre Holland, Lynn Nottage, Claudia Rankine, Precious Okoyomon, Okwui Okpokwasili, Gavin Brown and Sant’Andrea de Scaphis, Ostia Antica, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), The Princeton Collaboratorium for Radical Aesthetics, Park Avenue Armory, THE OFFICE, Lesley Phlek, Kearra Gopee, Ainsley Kaas, Sterling Hedges, Erin Markey, Wesley Harris, Melinda Nugent, Irondale, Mercury Store, Color Collective, Brooklyn Lighting & Grip, Hand Held Films, Lightbulb Rentals
Movement I Montage - Quoted Film Credits
Clips appearing in the Movement I: The End of White Supremacy montage are sourced from the following films:
Within Our Gates, dir. Oscar Micheaux (1920)
The Passion of Joan of Arc, dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer (1928)
Native Son, dir. Pierre Chenal (1951)
The World, the Flesh, and the Devil, dir. Ranald MacDougall (1959)
La Jetee, dir. Chris Marker (1962)
Night of the Living Dead, dir. George A. Romero (1968)
I am Legend, dir. Francis Lawrence (2007)
These film citations - presented without sound and projected behind the stage performer - appear in compliance with the quotation exception of Article 15a Dutch Copyright Act. The montage clips (total duration: 5m39s) comprise approximately 20% of Movement I and 4.5% of the entire work (Minor Music at the End of the World). The inclusion of these quotations is based on works lawfully made public and presented in limited excerpts proportional to the original works for the purpose of scholarly treatise and social polemic.
