A DNAWORKS Production
With:
Daniel Banks
Kwesi Johnson
Ken Norris
Alvon Reed
Papi Salgado
DESIGNERS:
Yu-Hsuan Chen (Set)
Marika Kent (Lighting)
Raquel Adorno (Costumes)
ARTWORK BY TROY LAMBERT @AFROTAL
ABOUT THE SECRET SHARER​
DNAWORKS’s adaption of Joseph Conrad’s 1909 novella THE SECRET SHARER is a devised, ensemble performance integrating dance, music, sound, text, and video projection. Considered an early Queer text, the story focuses on two characters, each a prisoner of secrets: a ship’s captain and a stowaway accused of murder on his own nearby ship. The Captain surreptitiously rescues Leggatt and the two men develop a silent intimacy in the proximity of the Captain’s quarters, sharing the experience of being outsiders in danger among the societies of their ships.
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THE SECRET SHARER is performed in an open-concept space with audiences co-creating the environment and the text—in an extension of DNAWORKS’s community storycircle practice, audience members will share their stories during the performance, interspersed at critical moments in the narrative.
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THE SECRET SHARER is an exploration of fragility, tenderness, and intimacy in times of personal duress and societal discrimination—the narrative of a silent, shared connection between two outsiders in the face of violence. In response to an increase in both hate crimes and LGBTQQ2SPIAA+ youth suicides worldwide, THE SECRET SHARER offers Queer-normative spaces of belonging for resiliency and healing.
WHY THE SECRET SHARER NOW?
Each of the ensemble members holds a story of resilience in the face of danger and violence; we had someone or something to hold onto to get us through and to bring us to a healthy relationship with ourselves and our identities. Conrad’s tale is unique in its narrative of resiliency, homosociality, and closeness. It sits on many people’sbookshelves as the companion piece to Heart of Darkness, yet few people know it. The story itself transcends color, ethnicity, geography, culture, and time, as DNAWORKS’s version demonstrates. It is a gripping narrative with healing powers.
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The project is a meditation on self, survival, otherness/strangeness, and healing. With the piece, we ask: What secrets are we forced to hold and why? What is the cost of hiding one’s identity? What constitutes personal freedom?
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As part of the process of developing the piece, the ensemble held storycircles in potential tour locations to hear local LGBTQQ2SPIAA+ narratives—especially from teens and young adults—about their life experiences. These stories impacted our composition and storylines.
In addition, all DNAWORKS events include a community storycircle, organically emerging from the creative offering. With THE SECRET SHARER, we integrate audience stories into the narrative, redefining the text at every showing and making it a performance in and of that location. Of primary importance throughout the whole process, from development to performance, is to create a healing space that reflects resilience—for the company, for the audiences, and for the nation.
THE SECRET SHARER HAS RECEIVED FUNDING FROM:
Academy for the Visual and Performing Arts, Texas A&M University; Alternate Roots; Amphibian Stage Productions; the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; Arts, Equity, & Education Fund; ArtsEmerson; Ford Foundation; the Grambrindi Davies Fund of The Pittsburgh Foundation; MAP Fund Award; National Endowment for the Arts; Network of Ensemble Theaters; New England Foundation for the Arts; and individual donors.
DNAWORKS is a 2023 NDP Grant Award recipient. Support was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project with funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Mellon Foundation in support of THE SECRET SHARER and to address continued sustainability needs.
TIMELINE
We have developed THE SECRET SHARER through a series of developmental residencies:​
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August 2019—Two-week residency at Amphibian Stage Productions, Fort Worth, TX, USA
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March 2020—Ten-day residency at Espace Tycheco, Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada
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August 2020—One-week virtual developmental workshop
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July 2022—Two-week residency at the Academy for the Visual and Performing Arts, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA
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March 2023—Two-week virtual Music and Dramaturgy residency
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July 2023—Two-week residency at Tanzraum Wedding, Berlin, Germany
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July 2024—Final developmental residency at Pittsburgh Public Theatre, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
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Fall 2025—Designer Residency at ArtsEmerson, Boston, MA, USA
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Spring 2026—Final Rehearsals and World Premiere at ArtsEmerson, Boston, MA, USA
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Spring 2026—Begin Touring
PRODUCTION NEEDS General
THE SECRET SHARER is a touring company of seven for the production (five performers, one PSM/Lighting Director, one Sound Engineer). Ideally, we will spend one week in the months leading up to performance, meeting with local community groups and holding storycircles and other community based activities. Our goal is that the first contact with our primary audience is not ticket sales. We have found, through this process, that each performance is 30-50% new audience members for venues.
PERFORMANCE NEEDS
THE SECRET SHARER requires a flexible space with no risers or stage, and with the audience on the same level as the performance (or with the audience and performance on the stage itself). The audience defines the perimeter of the playing area. We are creating a version of THE SECRET SHARER that happens in a fully functioning theatre with theatrical lighting, projection, and sound elements, as well as other versions that can happen in function halls, community spaces, retrofitted spaces, and outdoors, with minimal design elements in place.
COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT
With the community storycircles we attempt to balance artist and audience voices and create a space for community members to learn more about one another. In THE SECRET SHARER we explore a deeper level of engagement—how audiences can co-create the performance with us, with their stories woven through the event in real time, co-authoring the performed text in a different way each performance. The co-witnessing of stories offers an opportunity to deepen inter-/intra-group understanding and progress. In service of our mission, dialogue and healing through the arts, we have led workshops around the world—with as many as one hundred participants, sometimes in languages we do not speak—during which people share openly. We understand how to create a space of respectful listening and sharing. With THE SECRET SHARER, we marry our workshop and performance techniques.
WORKSHOPS OFFERED BY THE SECRET SHARER ENSEMBLE
“Curating Community Storycircles” with Members of the Ensemble
Members of THE SECRET SHARER ensemble will lead a storycircle for community leaders and members based on revolutionary artist John O’Neal’s method. Participants will then have a close look at the storycircle process and protocols and begin to practice leading storycircles, themselves.
“Devising Theatre for Community Connection” with Daniel Banks
Explore the relationship between art-making and community building and the power of personal experiences and stories as source material for devising performance.
Other Workshop Options:
“Acting through Action”with Daniel Banks
“Contemporary Dance Fusion”with Kwesi Johnson
“Creative Session in Hip Hop Theatre”with Kwesi Johnson
“(Im)printing the Voice”with Ken Norris
USEFUL LINKS
www.facebook.com/dnaworkssecretsharer/
For more information, please contact info@dnaworks.org