Margaret Laurena Kemp, associate professor of Theatre and Dance, and Julie Wyman,associate professor of Cinema and Digital Media, present their new short film, “She Who Is” (working title): an interpretation of stage directions as written by Adrienne Kennedy for her play “The Owl Answers.” This work-in-process will be screened at the Imagining America:  Artists and Scholars in Public Life Conference on Thursday, Oct. 12 from 1 to 2:30 p.m. in the UC Davis Conference Center Ballroom. 

Performed within an actual teaching theatre where typically scientists lecture on their findings, this work poses a dialogue between African-American social dance and artistic practice as an accumulated knowledge bank. This bank can be, like these sometimes contradictory stage directions,  ignored, overwhelmed by the colonization of the body, imagination and intellect, or just plain lost over time.  Dressed in a ’see -through’ Victorian Costume, Kemp continues a creative exploration of what abolitionist called ‘ the slow process of emancipation’ as it relates authorship, spatial awareness, and cellular memory. Wyman and Kemp explore shared interests in duration, gesture, and materiality, combining lens and live performance to allow the performer and viewer to consider what it means to be alive in a body that is not your own.