Primer for an impossible conversation: talkback

Continuing to unpack their years-long conversation around race, theater artists Marcella Murray and David Neumann, alongside collaborator Tei Blow, wove imagery, short bursts of dance, and the digitized distance we all experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic into an online theater work, Primer for an Impossible Conversation.  Primer was a step-by-step non-instruction manual revealing the efforts needed for two people to be in the same place at the same time. The work emerged from the need to continue this conversation as a creative act, adapting and responding to the artists’ Obie Award-winning Distances Smaller Than This Are Not Confirmed.

As Marcella and David hurtle through space, they are faced not only with the challenge of having a conversation from their prospective experiences (she’s Black, he’s white), but also with the difficulties inherent in connecting over online platforms while quarantined from in-person exchanges during Covid.  Jaqueline Laughton engaged with David, Marcella, and Tei after the virtual premier of Primer to talk about the work. They discussed how the project shifted from the stage to the screen and about making a work centered on connection while being physically separated. The group unpacked ideas of justice, safety, liberation, and bravery within the on-going sometimes-clunky but ever-necessary dialogue about race. Watch the video below for the full experience.