The Kea Project
History / Description
The Kea Project began in 2021, when Jill Kearney, Founder and Executive Director at ArtYard, approached me to ask if I would make a performance about Kea Tawana — a woman who had built an 86-foot long, 3-story tall ark in the Central Ward of the city of Newark. Kea built her ark from the homes of people who were encouraged, or coerced, to leave in order to make way for “urban renewal.” Kea’s ark was a memorial, an act of protest, and a studied obsession. She built her ark in a public space, on land she didn’t own. She built her ark single-handedly over the course of 20 years. A person expected to be invisible made herself gigantic. In 1987, the mayor of Newark condemned the ark. Kea disassembled it alone, and sold the materials for firewood. Jill was moved by Kea’s tenacity, vision – and by all that Kea’s life illuminates and inspires. Lucky me, Jill offered me an opportunity to spend time with Kea’s story.
I assembled a team of skilled and dedicated collaborators. Through a series of research and performance residencies that included workshops with local communities, we built a 60-minute performance. The performance begins with a lecture introducing artifacts from Kea’s archive, and moves into a world with live electric cello, synth, and voice, spare poetic language, a landscape of sculpture and puppets, and seamless ensemble movement that brings it all to life.
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Kea’s story invites us to consider so many things: gender, race, identity, displacement, and home. Her life’s journey creates pin-pricks in the map. It takes us from Japanese internment camps to a Hopi reservation, an orphanage, box car travel, riots of ‘67 in the Central Ward of Newark. Her story sees the unseen, it asks what is home, it celebrates and mourns the fragility of life.
We premiered our performance, Kea and the Ark, at ArtYard in May 2023. It was fantastic. Later that month, we toured to The Kohler Foundation in Sheboygan Wisconsin, who recently acquired Kea’s archive and shared some of the archive in their exhibition Kea Tawana: I Traveled into the Future in a Dream. Our performance was featured in the opening weekend. We returned to ArtYard to install an exhibition of set elements and filmed footage of the performance, which was on display in the ArtYard through July 23, 2023. I gave a talk and shared the performance footage at the Global Latvian Arts Center, Cesis, Latvia on July 14 2023. The film was ongoing in the gallery there June 28-August 3. We returned to the Kohler Foundation several times in the summer and fall to participate in panel discussions, research, project development, and public workshops and additional performances.
We are continuing to develop the performance and bring it to new audiences. I will be writing a new section, leading workshops connected to the story. Composer Daniel de Jesus and I are making an album. Collage artist and photographer Peter Jacobs and I are exploring opportunities for writing and illustrating a book using our combined visual sensibilities.
Video
KEA - 2 Minute Trailer
KEA - 9 Minute Selects
KEA - 18 Minute Selects with Added Narration
Performance Stills
What People Are Saying
… STUNNING!! …
… a lullaby of the tragic …
… What place in the world wouldn’t benefit from this story? …
– ArtYard Audience Member
From Whit MacLaughlin
OBIE and Barrymore Award-winning Artistic Director of New Paradise Laboratories
… Sebastienne Mundheim, Founder and Artistic Director of White Box Theatre, and her creative team have woven together fact, fiction, and powerful imagery to create a beguiling and lucid portrait of this elusive figure. The result is almost a séance, rendering Kea, a ghostlike but imposing figure, into a forcefully real presence. Quiet, insightful storytelling and lyrics, written and delivered by Mundheim in a respectful, almost scholarly way, combine with an ethereal musical score, and surprising, always evocative puppetry, to create a difficult-to-describe weave of subtle and not-so-subtle effects. One might call the style “epic poetry of objects,” or “cinematic sculpture.”
…The inventiveness of the physical life of the piece is substantial and impressively deep. Rarely have I seen such sophisticated puppetry marshaled towards a truly phantasmagoric assembly of effects.
Taken together, the silence, the sound, the words, and the music cohere into a startlingly concrete biography that reflects powerfully on the life of a true American original, whose complexity and subtlety might render her story too slippery to tell. Mundheim’s trans-medial approach is deployed sensitively and with just the right touch.
… a beautifully crafted, concise performance … SO TIMELY…
… I drove home with a sense of wonder …
– Kohler Foundation Audience Member
From Bill Adair
Former Program Director at The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage of the Pew Charitable Trusts
You said you don’t perceive yourself as a political person but there was a subtext to it and it was political; in the sense that in this time, when trans people are among the most vulnerable in our country, politically, being beat-up on by demagogues constantly. Without it being explicit at all, you’re giving enormous respect, that this person was an extraordinary person, a trans person, and that in itself is a highly political act.
Gender non-conformity and mental illness are aspects of her story that you never name. You take her as she is - and that’s important, without labels.
… experiential and gorgeous ...
… a powerful portrayal of loss …
– ArtYard Audience Member
From Pamela Barnett
Dean of The School of Arts and Communications, The College of New Jersey
When I walked into the performance space, I gasped. I actually did … I had an immediate, visceral recognition that I was entering another world … I see that obsessional act of creation out of detritus as both touching and heroic. Building upon a foundation that is always unstable, like all of our lives really.
Fun with Props at ArtYard, 2023
Collaborators / Performers
Sebastienne Mundheim (Lead Artist: Writer, Designer, Director, Performer, Workshop Leader) is a performance-maker, installation artist, and educator with more than 30 years of experience in interdisciplinary arts and arts education. Her work integrates visual installation, puppetry, storytelling, dance, and theater. In addition to making her own work, Mundheim is a thought-partner and consultant for numerous other artists and arts organizations.
Mundheim/White Box Theatre have been commissioned and/or presented by institutions nationally and internationally including: The Rosenbach Museum and Library, The University of Pennsylvania, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts, The Kimmel Center for Performing Arts, The Arden Theatre, Theatre Exile, PA Ballet, Franklin and Marshall College, Keene State University, Vermont Performance Lab, Marlboro College, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Arts, and The Irish Ministry of Arts and Culture.
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Collaborators have included New Paradise Laboratories; Kate Watson-Wallace/Anonymous Bodies; Thaddeus Phillips/Lucidity Suitcase; Kun Yang Lin Dance; Tania Isaac Dance; Brian Sanders JUNK; and Ballet X. Her work has received support from the Dolfinger McMahon Foundation, Lenfest Foundation, New England Foundation for the Arts, The Pew Charitable Trust, Philadelphia Theatre Initiative and Dance Advance, Pennsylvania Performing Artists on Tour, the Philadelphia Cultural Fund, Trust for Mutual Understanding, and numerous commissioning organizations.
In 2017, Mundheim received national recognition from the Kennedy Center for the Arts College Theatre Festival for Distinguished Achievement in Puppetry Design and Direction and Distinguished Achievement in Overall Production. In 2014, she won Barrymores (Philadelphia’s Excellence in Theatre Award) for Outstanding Design and for Best Ensemble for her adaptation of A Child’s Christmas in Wales. In 2013, she received an Independence Foundation Fellowship for Writing. In 2011 she was a finalist for the Pew Fellowship in the Arts. She received her BA/BFA from UPenn 1990 and her EdM from Harvard in 2000.
Upcoming projects include: puppet and mask creation for Roald Dahl’s Big Friendly Giant, Arden Theatre Company, Philadelphia December 2023. Co-creator and designer for Bartok’s Monster, Annenberg Theatre, Philadelphia in collaboration with the Deadalus Quartet and Pig Theatre, January 2024. 55 Puppets and Objects: Exhibition at the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, Wilmington Delaware, January-May 2024.
Daniel de Jesús (Composer, Singer, Thinker) is a painter, composer and songwriter. Their musical practice explores tribal beats, ambient sonic spaces, and string arrangements. Their work has been described as Baroque pop and Neo-Goth. Daniel de Jesús has nine studio recordings of their music and performs with orchestras and rock bands worldwide.
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Projects include: collaborations with painter and performance artist David Antonio Cruz, singer-songwriter Courtlyn Carr, The Bearded Ladies Cabaret, Pig Iron Theater, and play wright Andrew Albert García. They have performed at venues including Park Ave. Armory, Millenium Park Theater, and World Café Live.
de Jesús currently works as the Music Education and Community Outreach Director for AMLA at Esperanza, a nonprofit that "promotes the development, dissemination, and understanding of Latin music and culture in the Philadelphia/Delaware Valley region with an emphasis on Youth."
Harlee Trautman (Core Collaborator, Thinker, Builder, Dancer) is a Philadelphia-based dance artist, choreographer, and sculptor. Her performance-making honors embodied knowledge, deep research, and collaborative possibility. She sees art making as a means to remain infinitely curious about the natural world, the universes that we hold, and in turn hold us.
Harlee is an artistic collaborator for White Box Theatre and dances professionally with The Naked Stark dance company, Artist House, and Archedream for Humankind.
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Notable work has been presented at the American Dance Festival (Durham, NC), Manship Theatre (Baton Rouge), the Republic (New Orleans), Mandell Theater (Philadelphia), Grounds for Sculpture (Hamilton, NJ), as well as on display at Philadelphia International Airport's D terminal. In 2023 she will debut new works in Philadelphia, New Jersey, and in Chicago.
Harlee earned her BFA from Louisiana State University. She has been a guest artist at Drexel University, Bryn Mawr College, Louisiana State, and Tulane. After six years of studying with Molly Shanahan, she will be a certified teacher of Spiral Body Technique, August of 2023.
Payton Smith (Performer, Builder, Thinker) is an interdisciplinary theatermaker. She has performed, crafted, designed, directed, and stage managed in Philadelphia, New York, New Orleans, and Santa Fe. She studied Theater and Performance at Bard College and the National Theater Institute at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center. Recent Philadelphia collaborations have included Pig Iron Theater Company, Nichole Canuso Dance Company, Annie Wilson, Alex Tatarsky, Bearded Ladies Cabaret, Philly Children's Theatre, and Urban Movement Arts. paytonesmith.com.
Candra Kennedy (Performer, Builder, Thinker) is a puppeteer, writer, and creator. She is interested in worlds microscopic and cosmic. Her one woman show Jug Baby: An Autobiography, and Weights and Measures, has toured France and the US. She is a founding member of PuppetTyranny. Candra has collaborated and performed with numerous companies in Philadelphia including: Orbiter 3, Applied Mechanics, White Box Theatre and Brat Productions.
Ain Gordon (Thought Partner, Dramaturg) is a three-time Obie Award-winning writer/director/actor, two-time NYFA recipient, Guggenheim Fellow in Playwriting, and a 2023 Creative Capital Awardee. Gordon’s work often focuses on marginalized/forgotten histories and the obscured figures inhabiting that space. His work has been seen at BAM Next Wave, Baryshnikov Arts Center, New York Theater Workshop, Performance Space 122/NY, and Dance Theater Workshop/NYLA (all NY); and Flynn Center (VT), Krannert Center (IL), International Festival of Arts & Ideas (CT), Center for the Art of Performance/UCLA, the Quick Center (CT), Williams College (MA), and the Mark Taper Forum (CA) among many others. Gordon is a former Core Writer of the Playwright’s Center (MN), has twice held the post of Visiting Artist at the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage (PA), a former Artist-In-Residence at NYU Tisch School of The Arts, former Resident Artist at The Hermitage (FL), and was a 2020 Pabst Endowed Writer-In-Residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, etc. Director of Pick Up Performance Co since 1992.
Eric Fiorito (Original Lighting Design, Technical Direction) is an artist, performer, and proud tool pusher. Born and bred in New Jersey, Eric graduated from Mason Gross School of the Arts in 1995 with a degree concentrating in Sculpture and Performance Art. A fascination with special effects makeup, animatronics, and the sculptural nature of lighting led him to a 24-year career in the motion picture film and commercial industry as a key grip, gaffer, and scenic designer/builder. Eric’s creative work has had him studying the influence of nature on labor development by examining contrasting found objects and exploring human interaction in self-created environments. Eric has been living and creating in Frenchtown with his wife and two children for over a decade and is constantly reminded of the warmth and wondrous nature of this community.
Peter Jacobs (Projection Collage) has worked and exhibited in the mediums of collage, photography, mixed media, video and installation for over 35 years. He explores formal concepts of displacement, radical juxtaposition, color theory and spatial relationships and muses with magical realism, architecture, poetry, humor, emotion and politics. His work has been installed on the streets of Montclair, a park in the mountains of France, a biennial in Poland, and in numerous galleries and museum exhibitions. He was a featured artist on the PBS series, State of the Arts and has received the top New Jersey Council of the Arts grant for his work in collage. Currently, his ongoing series, The Collage Journal is approaching it’s 19th year in which he has created a collage every day, uninterrupted, from the daily newspaper.
Caitlin Virginia (Management, Collaborator) Works in theatre, photography, sound/music production, and movement. They have performed, directed, dramaturg'd, and sound designed, with emphasis on Commedia dell'Arte and cabaret. Venues have included: L'Etage, Knauer Performing Arts Center, Winterthur Gardens, and Calabria, Italy. After a three year hiatus due to the pandemic, gratitude is not enough to express how Virginia feels to be a part of the theatre again | caitlinvirginia.com
Mackenzie Hall (Stage Manager Two) Mackenzie (she/her) is an emerging artist with experience in direction, dramaturgy, choreography, theatrical intimacy, stage management, and teaching theatre to children. Mackenzie studied at Elon University (BA in Drama & Theatre Studies) and Accademia Europea di Firenze. She has also trained with Theatrical Intimacy Education, Ashley Hiester School of Music, and Dan Callaway Studio and worked for The National Women’s Theatre Festival based in North Carolina. Mackenzie is currently a teaching artist for Pennsylvania Youth Theatre and Touchstone Theatre in Bethlehem, PA. Select SM credits: Matilda (PYT), Wanda’s World (The Swain School).
Elizabeth Jacobs (Builder, Thinker) is a maker, painter, sculptor, print maker, driven by curiosity, inspired by the natural world. She received her BFA from SUNY Purchase and her MA in Arts Education from NYU. She has taught art for over 40 years, owning and operating The Clay Studio in Montclair.
Vanessa Hernandez Artunduaga (Studio Maker, Performance Experimentation, Thinker) Visual artist from New Jersey, focused on automatic drawing in pencil and charcoal; painting in egg tempera; sculpture and mask-making involving wire, fabric, and dried organic material; and experimentation with movement and character. Also Editor at Large for Seeds of the League Program (the Art Students League of New York's community youth program).
Eppchez Yes (Studio Maker, Performance Experimentation, Thinker) eppchez! is a Quaker, gender-expansive, Cuban & Jewish theater maker, vocalist, and designer. In 2016 eppchez started up Alma's Engine; a process-focused production company. Ey has self-produced 5 original plays through Alma’s Engine and collaborated as a writer, performer, and/or deviser with Philly companies such as Pig Iron, Simpatico, The Bearded Ladies Cabaret, Swimpony, and Applied Mechanics among others. eppchez has institutional connections to Wesleyan University (BA in theater & creative writing), Headlong Performance Institute, Play Penn (where ey is currently a member of The Foundry an emerging Philly playwright’s group), Azuka Theatre’s New Pages writer’s group, and Green Street Friends Meeting where ey worships on Sundays a few blocks from their home in Philly’s Germantown neighborhood.
Special Thanks
The John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Ann Brusky, Laura Bickford, Doug Brusky, Jenny Wallace, Patricia DuChene, Ann Deuser, Karin Oliver-Kreft, Camille Staats. ArtYard, Jill Kearney, Clayre Saxon, Michael Gilheany, Jessica Hough, Dawn Ferguson, Ngena Hohn, Meghan Van Dyke, Elsa Mora, Nancy MacCauley, Mary Lotus, Leah Cahill, Rich Cahill, Erin Arthur. Brian Sanders, Jeanette Brown, Samantha Tower, Jamie Merwin, Arden Kass, Isabella Fehlandt, Kate Coots, Anna DeCaria, Elizabeth Jacobs, Bonnie Berkowitz, Patty Dominguez, ArcheDream for Humankind, Philadelphia Cultural Fund, Linda Richardson, Guna & Robert Mundheim, Jim Toia and students of Lafayette College, Lonnie & Mary Trautman, and Kea Tawana.