“The Covid Journals was not really something I had much choice in. It wasn’t that any one person insisted that I make these images, it was more of a historical imperative,” says photographer Accra Shepp. “Early on in the lockdown of last year, March of 2020, everyone in New York was at a loss and feeling confused. Artists everywhere, myself included, were trying to understand how to articulate what was happening.” On April 16th, 2021 The Civilians will present Showing Up, a live-streamed evening of music and performance inspired by portraits from Shepp’s The Covid Journals.
Showing Up focuses on section three of Covid Journals, entitled “Justice.” The successor to “Contagion” and “Hunger,” “Justice” documents some of the many people who showed up to Black Lives Matter gatherings in NYC following the murder of George Floyd. Some of the subjects of these portraits were contacted and interview by The Civilians, and it is from these interviews that the songs and performances of Showing Up are drawn.
The evening will be directed by Colette Robert, a 2015-2016 R&D group member, who also directed the Civilians 2016 cabaret Flops, Failures, and Fiascos. To Robert, the process of directing The Civilians’ signature ‘investigative theater’ is not dissimilar from the act of writing. “When I direct a traditional play or musical, I feel like my job is to translate the writer’s words from the page into its 3D form. For me, there’s an element very similar to writing…in directing a cabaret like Showing Up. Because I’m choosing which parts of much longer interviews are getting heard, and the order in which the audience hears them. And each small decision really affects the overall storytelling…I find making those types of decisions, getting into the minutiae, really fascinating!”
Robert describes Showing Up as being “definitely in line with” her body of work as a director and theater-maker, which “explores the messy, beautiful, ugly complications of living in the U.S.” and has a special focus on “uplifting Black voices, underrepresented voices.” The piece also speaks to her first artistic love of visual art. “I took a lot of drawing and painting classes in school and I still dabble– and so working on a show that features photography so prominently feels like a nice bridge between two equally important passions.”
The evening will be framed by a conversation with Shepp himself and will feature original songs by artists including Rashaan Carter, Jacinth Greywoode & Rebecca Hart, Jaime Lozano, and Katie Madison & Jarrett Murray. The event will be co-presented with the International Center of Photography and Alice Austen House, and with the collaboration of the Alfred Stieglitz Society at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Shepp comments that he hopes the evening will bring a new specificity to our understanding of the protests. “The individuals in the play will not be nameless faces in a crowd, but fully realized human beings seeking to share their feelings. And so this work might represent a level of exposure to how these events [occurred] that is missing from many people’s understanding.”
Robert similarly looks forward to the piece highlighting a diverse group of activists and hopes it will stimulate further action from the audience. “I hope it inspires everyone watching to keep showing up. Because there’s a lot of work that still needs to be done. It’s going to be a thought-provoking and inspiring evening!”
Showing Up will be livestreamed online April 16th at 7:30pm EST. To register for this free event, visit TheCivilians.com
To check out more of Colette’s work, and to see what she’s up to next, check out her website at www.coletterobert.com.
