The Process Series has announced the spring 2024 leg of its 16th season, “Voices | Visions and Revisions,” with performances that focus on the voices of the artists through whose eyes we see our world anew and the process through which those artists arrive at the works we see.
Dedicated to the development of new and significant works in the performing arts, The Process Series features professionally mounted presentations of works in progress. The goal is to illuminate the ways in which artistic ideas take form, examine the creative process and offer audiences a chance to provide feedback as the work continues to develop.
All performances this spring will begin at 7:30 p.m. and will be presented in the Black Box Theater in Swain Hall. They are free and open to the public.
SPRING 2024
“Rap and Redemption on Death Row”
By Alim Braxton and Mark Katz
March 1-2 *NOTE DATE CHANGE
This show is based on the correspondence between John P. Barker Distinguished Professor of Music Mark Katz and rapper and musician Alim Braxton, who has been on Death row for 28 years. The pair is simultaneously releasing a book and record album after writing each other for over a year, about everything from Braxton’s work on behalf of wrongfully convicted prisoners and his cruel and unwarranted 37-day stint in isolation to the nationwide protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.
As Katz says, “Both despite and because of his history, Alim Braxton has a great deal to teach us —about rap and redemption and so much more.”
“The Angels of Detroit”
By John Pietrowski
March 8-9
Pietrowski’s new play, based on the poem “Angels of Detroit” and other Philip Levine poetry, takes us to 1972 where a newly-minted professor and celebrated poet of the “voice of the working man” returns to his hometown of Detroit on a book tour. Prior to giving a reading at his alma mater, the poet, Philip, meets in a bar with colleagues who worked with him on the assembly line in Detroit when he was a young man, one of whom thinks his poetry is terrible and untrue.
“Three Poets in Performance”
With Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Elisabeth Lewis Corley and Destiny Hemphill, with music by Nikki Kilgore and company
April 12-13
Three poets explore race, ethnicity, gender, culture, intersectionality and what we might require to address our global climate and cascading emergencies in an evening of performed poetry accented by musician Nikki Kilgore.
Calvocoressi is a Walker Percy Fellow and associate professor in the department of English and comparative literature and the winner of a variety of awards and fellowships, including the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry. Corley is a writer, producer and actor with credits in both theater and TV productions, and is an alumna of Carolina where she has also taught screenwriting and poetry performance. Hemphill is the 2022-23 Kenan Visiting Writer in the creative writing program in the department of English and comparative literature and is the recipient of several other writing fellowships, including the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. Finally, Kilgore is a singer-songwriter whose wide range of musical accomplishments includes most recently playing as the bassist and one of the frontwomen for the band Seed Is.
Sponsors
The Process Series’ 16th season, based in the department of communication, receives support from StreetSigns Center for Literature and Performance and the Manbites Dog Theater Fund, and is co-sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences, Institute for the Arts and Humanities and the following College departments: American studies, art and art history, communication, creative writing, dramatic art, English and comparative literature and music.
Learn more at processseries.unc.edu.