Sharon Hayes is an artist who uses video, performance, sound and public sculpture to expose specific intersections between history, politics and speech, to unspool reductive historical narratives and to re-ignite dormant pathways through which counter-understandings of the contemporary political condition can be formed. In her work, she lingers in the grammars–linguistic, affective and sonic–through which political resistance appears. These examinations are central to her work: from her earliest video installation in 2003, Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) Screeds #13, 16, 20 & 29, in which she re-speaks of each of the four audio tapes made by Patty Hearst and the SLA during her kidnapping, to her most recent work Ricerche: four, a two-channel video installation composed of footage from three group interviews with queer and trans elders in Philadelphia, Dowelltown, Tennessee and Los Angeles. Hayes’ practice is in conversation and acts in collective force and resonance with the heterogeneous field of actions, voices and practices that resist normative behaviors, complicit and unjust social agreements and proscriptive temporalities to open up new ways of being together in the world. Her work sustains a distinct and vital commitment to performance and to collaboration and is devoted to the radical possibilities of non-normative occupation of public space and in holding public space as a site for unpredictable and unregulated encounters.
Hayes has had numerous solo exhibitions, including at n.b.k. (Neue Berliner Kunstverein) in Berlin, Germany (2022), Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden (2019), Andrea Rosen Gallery in New York (2014), the Tanya Leighton Gallery in Berlin (2013), the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (2012), and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid (2012). Her work has also been exhibited at the Venice Biennale (2013), the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. She is the recipient of many awards and grants, including a US Artists Fellowship (2021), Pew Fellowship (2016), a Guggenheim Fellowship (2014), the Alpert Award in Visual Arts (2013), an Anonymous Was a Woman Award (2013), and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Fellowship (2007). She currently teaches in the Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania.
Brooke O’Harra (she/her) is a professional theater director and an artist. Current projects include an upcoming tour a large-scale performance project titled Be Holding with poet Ross Gay, composer Tyshawn Sorey, and the new ensemble Yarn/Wire (David Gaines, Yolanda Wisher and Ross Gay perform). Brooke is also the co-creator of a collaborative performance with artist Sharon Hayes called Time Passes. Time Passes is an 8-hour performance that uses the book-on-tape recording of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse as its spine. This show has had two iterations and will continue to be performed for a decade.
O’Harra begin her directing career in New Orleans LA in 1999 where she formed the experimental company The Theater of a Two-headed Calf with composer Brendan Connelly. That company moved to New York where Brooke directed all fourteen productions: including productions including the OBIE Award winning Drum of the Waves of Horikawa (2007 HERE Arts Center), It Cannot Be Called Our Mother but Our Graves a.k.a Macbeth (Soho Rep Lab 2008/9), Trifles (Ontological Hysteric Incubator 2010), and the opera project You, My Mother (2012 at La Mama ETC, 2013 in the River to River Festival). Brooke conceived, directed, wrote for, and performed in the Dyke Division’s live serial Room for Cream (Four seasons — 28 episodes) at La Mama, ETC 2008-10 and at the New Museum 2017. She wrote, directed and produced a nine-part research and performance project titled I am Bleeding All Over the Place: Studies in directing or nine encounters between me and you. The project began in April 2014 at the New Museum, NYC. Included a large-scale performance title I’m Bleeding All Over the Place: A Living History Tour was performed at La Mama ETC in June 2016. Followed by several more one-night iterations through the Spring of 2019. The project culminates in a book of essays on directing titled Who is in the Room? (Routledge EDI Series released Sept. 2024). Brooke currently teaches Theater, Creative Writing and Performance at The University of Pennsylvania School of Arts and Sciences.
Greg Mehrten has been making theater in New York and around the world since 1975. A two-time OBIE Award-winner, he is currently a Senior Artistic Adviser at Mabou Mines and is thrilled to be collaborating again with Brooke O’Harra and Sharon Hayes.
Janice Owusu is an actor and singer passionate about storytelling and bringing a voice to stories that have been left on the shelf for too long. She trained under Brooke O’Harra at the University of Pennsylvania and is excited to continue collaborating with both Brooke and Sharon.
Pauli Pontrelli (they/them) is an actor and creator. Performance credits include The Trees (Playwrights Horizons), The Visitor (The Public), This Clement World (St. Ann’s Warehouse), House of Dance (Half Straddle). Film: Fry Day (Criterion Collection). Choreographer, marie it’s time by minor theater. MFA: NYU Grad Acting. @pauli.amorous
