A reflection & sharing by Travis Coe, a 25 year-old Afro-Latinx man born in Elizabeth, NJ and currently an Associate Ensemble Member at Double Edge Theatre in Ashfield, MA.
What breaks my heart some days is that my family comes from many places, but our history was not written down in an accessible way. I don’t know where my far back ancestors specifically came from. I don’t know anything about our old kingdom. The possible kings and queens in my ancestry. I haven’t had this privilege as a black and latinx person. I keep searching and searching. There have been name changes due to necessity, desire to rebuild, due to fear. I am crying as I write this because I will probably never know. I ask and ask and try to go farther but can’t.
Now I breathe deeper, think about my work and my heart smiles. My work imagines and brings forth our ancestral spirits and I invite them daily into my Garden of Re-membering (to sow the pieces together) for OUR freedom today. I do this with SUGA, I visit them in many odd universes with LEONORA’S WORLD, they visited me in I AM THE BARON and I visioned them in the afro-future in WE THE PEOPLE and then I proceeded to baptize a young W.E.B Du Bois in our magical pond in Ashfield.
I create my future. I build up my imagination through my work and art to create a vibrant future. My art is a necessity. It saves me from the fear, which tends to penetrate me when I am not looking. It gives me a thousand eyes of the many who have come before me. I give those gifts to the many who will come after me. Seeking my Freedom is a daily act. I wake up every day working on it. Recently I saw a picture posted from IN THE NAME OF by my friend Ebony Golden and Alexis Pauline Gumbs that said in big ass letters “FREEDOM IS NOT A SECRET.” “IT’S A PRACTICE.”
That said, the incredible and acclaimed The Garifuna Collective from Belize just dropped an album ABAN this week and it is FIRE. The collective, as well as the legacy of Andy Palacio, have been amazingly inspiring for me as I create my solo performance SUGA. They bring me back to the motherland and invoke a spirit full of dance, deep breathing, reflections on life and death as well as pleasure and joy. Give this magic a listen and learn about their work.
“The music is passed down through generations. Each person (composer, singer, instrument player, engineer) is free to play their own original style which comes from the heart of each musician paying homage to their past and keeping it relevant for the future.[….] We will take the audience through a historical musical journey as we pay tribute to our friends and ancestors through music….We are excited to be given a space to share our culture and Belize through music.”
From the article “Garifuna Collective keeps Belizean music alive”
https://www.taosnews.com/stories/garifuna-collective-keeps-belizean-music-alive,59580
With love and courage,
Travis Coe
SUGA is slated for its premiere this November 15–16, 21–24, 2019 at Double Edge Theatre. The performance is conceived, created, and performed by Travis Coe and directed by Stacy Klein. Travis, a DE Associate Ensemble Artist, began working on SUGA in 2016 as he explored the Afro-Caribbean/Latinx history of his family, and their native lands spanning Belize, Nicaragua, and Puerto Rico. Klein, DE’s Founder and Artistic Director, watched some of Travis’ early creative process and began working in dialogue together with Travis to develop the material and create this performance. It is an investigation of freedom, and the bounds — personal, artistic, societal, and political — one must break through to achieve that end. As a caretaker of a museum of memory, Coe touches/reveals/remixes all the aspects of himself — as Queer, Black, Latino, and American, to find the path to sing, fly, run — toward Freedom.
Joining the team of SUGA are DE’s longtime design collaborator Michal Kuriata and company artists Tadea Klein (costume designer) and John Peitso(music director).
The performance is inspired by the photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe, the paintings and sculptures of Zdzisław Beksiński, and the life and work of James Baldwin.
Recent Previews:
March 8–10, 2019
at Double Edge’s Farm Center
To learn more about SUGA, visit the Double Edge Theatre website: https://doubleedgetheatre.org/suga
Written by : Jose Neustadt
