Onstage is a two-story house. From one angle, it’s mucked out after a flood. From another, it’s a new development wrapped in Tyvek. And from another, it’s “Tara” from Gone with the Wind being transformed into an Airbnb. The piano can’t be tuned. Someone is quilting in the corner. Come in.

RECONSTRUCTING (Still Working but the Devil Might Be Inside) asks how, in the aftermath of slavery, we might collectively navigate history. Propelled by a quilt-like score, this “complex and combustible project” (Sarah Holdren, Vulture) slips between fact and fiction, performance and ritual, process and product, to tell a story of historical figures and fictional characters seeking and fleeing intimacy—and the TEAM as makers doing the same.

Written over eight years in residencies and rooms across the country, RECONSTRUCTING emerged through The TEAM’s consensus-driven writing process, in which the entire collective shapes the script. Each artist brought their own histories, legacies, and lived experiences, carefully weaving them together into something new. On and off stage, the work lays bare the vulnerability and perseverance required of its creators as they asked: How do we walk through our histories together, and should we?

(Photo by: Maria Baranova-Suzuki)