“Come on in. We invite you to remember and Dream in all directions of time – to Witness and Flow/to be Seen – and held. . . to Open and participate in activating space and Time with us. Welcome. We Love you.” – Sharon Bridgforth
The bull-jean Experience provides an invitation and catalyst to explore the world of bull-dog-jean, Sharon Bridgforth’s beloved woman-loving-woman protagonist of Lambda Literary award winning the bull-jean stories. This collaborative performance highlights the contributions of Dr. Omi Osun Joni L. Jones, author and Professor Emerita from the African and African Diaspora Studies Department at the University of Texas at Austin, and projected visuals by Za‘Nia Coleman, most recently known for her film The Audacious Artist Salon celebrating The Lorraine Hansberry Initiative’s To Sit Awhile sculpture by Alison Saar. Bridgforth’s work traverses bull-jean’s world of the 1920s rural South by heralding the spirit of African-American people and celebrates Black herstory and survival.
DETAILS:
The bull-jean Experience
Written by Sharon Bridgforth, performed by Dr. Omi Osun L. Jones with visuals by Za’Nia Coleman
Directed by Signe V. Harriday
Signe V. Harriday | Producer
Noël Raymond | Producer
Elizabeth MacNally | Production & Stage Manager
SHOWTIMES are October 27, 28, and 30 at 7:00PM. October 30th will feature ASL Interpretation.
Pick-your-price tickets are on sale now. Each show will be capped at 70 people. FACIAL MASKS ARE REQUIRED TO ATTEND.
BUY TICKETSThe bull-jean Experience
by Sharon Bridgforth
CREATIVE TEAM
Photo by David Maziarz
Sharon Bridgforth, Playwright
A 2022 Winner of Yale’s Windham Campbell Prize in Drama, Sharon Bridgforth is 2020-2023 Playwrights’ Center Core Member, a 2022-2023 McKnight National Fellow and a New Dramatists alumnae. She has received support from The Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, Creative Capital, MAP Fund and the National Performance Network. Her work is featured in Teaching Black: The Craft of Teaching on Black Life and Literature, Mouths of Rain an Anthology of Black Lesbian Thought, Feminist Studies Vol 48 Number 1, honoring 40 years of This Bridge Called by Back and But Some of Us Are Brave!. Sharon’s new book, bull-jean & dem/dey back (53rd State Press 10/2022) features two performance/novels that will be produced by Pillsbury House + Theatre in Minneapolis 2022/2023.
Photo by Bruce Silcox
Signe V. Harriday, Director
Signe V. Harriday is Artistic Producing Director at Pillsbury House + Theatre and is a fierce visionary and powerful storyteller who crafts theatre that awakens our individual and collective humanity. As a director, multidisciplinary artist, activist, and facilitator, she uses theatre as a catalyst to ask questions about who we are and who we are in relation to each other. Past accomplishments include:
Associate Company Member of Pillsbury House Theatre.
Co-founder of Million Artist Movement, a collective of artists committed to Black liberation.
Co-founder of the award-winning synchronized swimming team, The Subversive Sirens.
Founder of Rootsprings Coop, a retreat center for BIPOC artists/activists/healers.
Co-founder of MaMa mOsAiC, a women of color theater company whose mission is to evoke positive social change through female centered work.
Core team member of REP Community Partners.
Signe earned her MFA in Acting at the Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at the American Repertory Theatre at Harvard and Moscow Art Theatre.
Photo by Corey Emanuel
Dr. Omi Osun Joni L. Jones, Performance
Omi Osun Joni L. Jones’ work is grounded in Black Feminist principles and theatrical jazz aesthetics. She is an artist/scholar/facilitator whose original performances include sista docta, a critique of academic life, Searching for Ọ̀ṣun, an ethnographic performance installation around the Divinity of the River, and Sittin’ in a Saucer, a series of engagements with audience/witnesses exploring the life of a nine-year-old Black girl growing up in the suburbs of Chicago. She has performed under the direction of Laurie Carlos and Daniel Alexander Jones, and has been a frequent performer/dramaturg/producer of Sharon Bridgforth’s work including Blood Pudding, love conjure/blues, and River See. Omi provided the introductions for Jones’ 2021 anthology of plays Love Like Light and Bridgforth’s performance novel love conjure/blues. Her most recent book is Theatrical Jazz: Performance, Àṣẹ, and the Power of the Present Moment, a collaborative ethnography focusing on three theatrical jazz practitioners. Omi has been shaped by Robbie McCauley’s activist art, Laurie Carlos’s insistence on being present, and Barbara Ann Teer’s overt union of Art and Spirit. She earned her Ph.D. from New York University, and her Embodied Social Justice Certificate from Transformative Change. She is Professor Emerita from the African and African Diaspora Studies Department at the University of Texas at Austin, a mother, a Queer wife, and a curious sojourner
Photo by Breon Jones
Za’Nia Coleman, Video & Projections
Za’Nia Coleman is an interdisciplinary artist experimenting with textiles, digital media, and cultural curation. Her primary medium is film focusing on documentary, oral history, and digital projections. The goal is to experiment with how to visualize the intersections of the archive, Black Folklore, and Black Science Fiction. The root of her work is archiving Black traditional and historical practices around love, pleasure, cultural expression, and community building. She is Co-Founder and Executive Director of Tangible Collective, an art collective that creates space devoted to Black Millennial thought and expression. Coleman holds a Bachelor’s degree in Film Studies and Film Theory and Culture.
Photo by ______
Dameun Strange, Composer
Dameun is a sound artist, multi-instrumentalist, and award-winning composer of conceptual electronic and improvised electro-acoustic works focusing on the African diaspora’s stories and themes, often exploring surrealist and afro-futurist ideas with unique impressionism. Dameun is compelled to express through sound and poetry, the beauty and resilience of the Black experience, digging into a pantheon of ancestors to tell stories of triumph while connecting the past, present, and future. Dameun has worked with such artists as Leslie Parker, Ananya Chatterjea, J. Otis Powell, and Sha Cage and has been a featured performer in concerts celebrating the work of George Lewis, Thurston Moore, and Henry Threadgill. He is a 2018 recipient of the ACF | Create Award and 2019 Jerome Hill Fellowship.
Dameun lives in Saint Paul, MN with his wife, Corina, and their 4 yo, Ezra. Like any good nerd, he enjoys a good sci-fi story and has a soft spot for anything related to cosmology.
Photo by Bruce Silcox
Katie Deutsch, Light Designer
Katie is Pillsbury House + Theatre’s Technical Coordinator. They worked on What to Send Up
When it Goes Down this past summer along with virtual shows like Breaking Ice: Mainstage and Fannie. They have worked at other companies around town including Penumbra Theatre and the Walker Art Center.
Photo by Bruce Silcox
Elizabeth MacNally, Production & Stage Manager
Elizabeth has been stage managing in the Twin Cities since 2001
and has made PH+T her artistic home. Some of her favorite
shows in the past include Main Street and Hiding in the Open at
the History Theatre; Next Fall and Recent Tragic Events at the
Jungle Theater; The Brothers Size, Buzzer and The Children at
Pillsbury House + Theatre and 9 Parts of Desire at the Guthrie
Theater. Elizabeth has been working as Pillsbury House +
Theatre’s production manager since 2012. Elizabeth has a B.F.A.
from Rockford University in Rockford, IL, is a proud member of
Actors’ Equity Association, and is a 2021-2022 McKnight Theatre
Artist Fellow at the Playwrights’ Center.
Photo by ______
Claudia Erikkson, Assistant Stage Manager & House Manager
Photo by ______
Kathy Maxwell, Video Support
Kathy Maxwell has designed video and lights for several Twin Cities’ arts organizations including
Penumbra Theatre, Mixed Blood Theatre, Open Eye Figure Theatre, Children’s Theatre Company, the
History Theatre, the Jungle Theatre, the Ordway and the Guthrie Theatre. Recent design credits include
Is Edward Snowden Single?, The White Card, This Bitter Earth, Benevolence, Mamma Mia and Ride the Cyclone. She received her M.F.A in theatrical design from The University of Minnesota and her B.A. in theatre and dance from the University of Texas.
A special thank you to Kellie Larson and Abbee Warmboe for making this production possible.
Pillsbury House + Theatre Company
Signe V. Harriday, Artistic Producing Director
Noël Raymond, Managing Director
Elizabeth MacNally, Production Manager
Elise Gumm, Marketing & Communications Manager
Michael Hoyt, Creative Community Liason
Julia Snider Nickerson, Chicago Avenue Project Director
Kurt Kwan, Breaking Ice Manager
Masanari Kawahara, Naked Stages Director
Katie Deutsch, Technical Coordinator
Laurie Smith Carlos, Late Nite Founder (Ancestor)
Resident Teaching Artists: Masanari Kawahara, Aimee K. Bryant, Kellie Larson, Julia Snider Nickerson, Clay Sietta, Bart Buch
Associate Company Members
Jamila Anderson
Clare Brauch
Laurie Smith Carlos (1949 – 2016)
John Catron
Christiana Clark
Paul de Cordova
Stephen DiMenna
Brian Goranson
Signe V. Harriday
Daniel Alexander Jones
Jodi Kellogg
Blayn Lemke
Marion McClinton (1954 – 2019)
Kimberly Joy Morgan
Sonja Parks
Heidi Batz Rogers
Michael Wangen (1954 – 2020)
James A. Williams
Payton J. Woodson
Pramila Vasudevan
Founder, Ralph Remington
Preceding Co-Artistic Director & Visionary, Faye M. Price