Honey Pot Performance's Black Feminist Praxis: Embodiments of Collaboration & Collectivity

Afro-feminist creative ensemble Honey Pot Performance makes performance works addressing the pressures of contemporary global life with a particular focus on black women and communities of color. HPP’s creative works ask big social and cultural questions, relying on artists, communities, data, and stories to weave layered narratives that poke, prod, and push us to imagine the ways we can remake power through our own stories while interrogating our histories. HPP’s work is collaborative in nature, the primary tools for making: sharing conversations and writing; gathering stories and data; engaging community along the process of making for active input to shape the final work; and seeking other formats to extend a creative work’s impact beyond the realm of performance.

This presentation explores HPP’s work at the intersection of critical performance and public humanities. With all of our multi-platform projects, we are thinking about how we use a black feminist frame as the root of our creative process to model the kinds of communities we want to be part of—communities that acknowledge the stories of folks who are often marginalized, take creative risks and experiment together, and are interested in building collective forms of action that redress power inequities and oppressions by being the change we want to see take root and flourish. Looking at several of our creative projects and processes all featuring extensive public engagement, this presentation explores HPP’s bricolage methods of inquiry based in choreographic craft, poetry & prose, intuitive responses through improvisation, performance and black feminist discourses.