Co-presented with The Chocolate Factory Theater

This audiovisual experience will be available to stream online.

This new iteration will feature intricate hand-cut collages, digital and analogue animation and illustration, with sound and sonic staging by Chris Giarmo, songs by Graham Reynolds, and visual collaborations with a host of artists such as; Kempson, Amanda Villalobos, Eva von Schweinitz, Madeline Best, Dan Hurlin, Victor Morales, Stephanie Morales, Stephanie Anuwe, Jay Silver, Rebecca Frank, Alex Albanese, Erica-Lynn Huberty, and Leonie Bell. It will also include dramatic performances by Dee Dorcas Beasnael, Brian Mendes, Crystal Wei, Oceana James and others.

ABOUT

Sibyl Kempson began creating performance art at Little Theater and Dixon Place in the year 2000. Her plays are published by 53rd State Press, PAJ, and PLAY: Journal of Plays. She launched the 7 Daughters of Eve Thtr. & Perf. Co. in 2015 at the Martin E. Segal Center at CUNY. Their first production, Let Us Now Praise Susan Sontag, premiered at Abrons in May of 2015. Kempson earned an MFA from Brooklyn College, and a BA from Bennington College, and is a member of the class of 2017 at New Dramatists, a 2014 USA Artists Rockefeller Fellow, and a MacDowell Fellow. She currently teaches at Sarah Lawrence College, the VCA at University of Melbourne, and through 7 Daughters. www.7daughtersofeve.com.

The Chocolate Factory Theater exists to encourage and support artists in their process of inquiry. We engage specifically with a community of artists who challenge themselves and, in doing so, challenge us. We believe that by supporting the labor of these artists, we contribute to elevating New York City as a thriving and more equitable wellspring of ideas. The Chocolate Factory embraces artistic practice as an integral part of the artist’s whole life, an essential component of the life of our community and a key element of a larger national and international artistic dialogue. As such, we host artists as our equal partners with shared autonomy, trust and appreciation. While we seek to make big ideas and extended relationships possible, we commit to working at a small, intimate and personal scale, with few artistic compromises or boundaries. We achieve all of this by creating a vessel for artistic experimentation through a residency package serving the whole artist, providing salary, space, responsive and flexible support for the development of new work from inspiration to presentation. Works commissioned and presented by The Chocolate Factory have received Bessie and Obie Awards and have toured nationally and internationally.

FUNDING

THE SECURELY CONFERRED, VOUCHSAFED KEEPSAKES OF MAERY S. is a co-commission by Abrons Arts Center & the Chocolate Factory Theater, and was developed with the support of the Baryshnikov Arts Center, New Dramatists, the Playwrights Center, with funding from the Jerome Foundation, NYSCA, the McKnight National Residency and Commission, patrons of 7 Daughters of Eve on Patreon, and participants in the 2020 7 Daughters course offerings, mentorship, and creative consultations.

Collage by Sibyl Kempson, image courtesy of the artist