House of Yes

February 28, 2018

This piece was commissioned by the Jewish organization, LabShul for their annual Prophetic Post Patriarchy Purim Performance Party at the House of Yes. 

Nessa directed a 48 hour devising lab with 17 women with varying performance experience. The piece subverts the tropes of the Beauty Pageant as a symbol of mass-broadcasted misogyny and patriarchal oppression. The all-female identifying ensemble shared personal stories of choosing agency and sovereignty over social acceptance, even when the result was exile. The piece examines the choices women make to labor for love.  

Working with these women affirmed that telling our true stories is an important piece of our personal and collective liberation from institutional oppression. Stories told by all of us - not just those who “make a living” from making art. Witnessing women standing boldly in the expression of vulnerability, struggle, joy and truth is seeing the cracks forming in the foundations of patriarchy.