JACK & 2018-2019 
Sound design and performance



JACK & by Kaneza Schaal considers re-entry into society after prison; focusing not on the time one has served, but the measure of one’s dreaming that is given to the state. “Jack” works the night shift at an industrial bakery. He returns home to bake a cake for his wife “Jill.” “Jack” ends up whirling through a dance – part dream, part ritual – re-entering his own internal life. The performance draws on aspirational class stories like those in The Honeymooners and Amos & Andy; the paintings of Agnes Martin, Ellen Gallagher and Ruth Azawa; tigers in Harlem; real and imagined entering society ceremonies like Cotillion balls; and markers of transition from John Canoe traditions, to the mirroring and mimicry found in African American dance pageantry of the late 19th Century.

The six songs in the MCA Jack - Prelude to the Dance playlist capture a portion of the textures and moods that slowly build and accumulate throughout JACK &, resounding in a cathartic sound collage during the final cotillion moment.

A song from the soundtrack for the 1943 film Cabin in the Sky (among the first big-budget films with an all-black cast, featuring Ethel Waters, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Lena Horne) sets the groundwork for a soundscape that plays on the duality of how we perceive music as cultural markers of different types of blackness. Soul music is ever-present in bits and pieces, as the hope and nostalgia of vintage 45s remind us how we got through the turbulence of the 1960s and 1970s and into the rugged 1980s. 




JACK & premiered at Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center in 2018.

Tour
New York Live Arts, New York, NY (2019)
Walker Arts Center Out There Festival, Minneapolis, MN (2019)
REDCAT, Los Angeles, CA (2018)
BAM Next Wave Festival, Brooklyn, NY (2018)
Lumberyard Contemporary Performing Arts, Catskill, New York (2018)
TBA Festival: PICA (Portland Institute of Contemporary Art) Portland, OR (2018)
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL (2018
On the Boards, Seattle, WA (2018)
Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH (2018)

Creative Team and Collaborators
Christopher Myers, Cornell Nate Alston, Rucyl Mills, Stacey Robinson, Modesto Flako Jimenez, Cheyanne Williams, Clarissa Ligon, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Megan Lang, Naomi Saito, Rachel Silverman, Jane Jung, Daphne Gaines, April Matthis, William Hyman, Robert Chapelle, Ashley Vellano.
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