Run of the Mills — July 2022 Residency

Artist Bio

U-Meleni Mhlaba-Adebo is a Zimbabwean American poet, author, speaker, singer, and educator who has performed internationally in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Nigeria, Portugal, and Ireland. She is fiercely passionate about using her voice for women’s empowerment, wellness, diversity & inclusion and the exploration of translation or “hyphenated identities” through her work.

Project Description

The performance invites audiences into a new world that rejects technology as we know it and instead relies on a catalytic offloading of encumbering objects, movements, and words to produce a new kind of power. A spoken word poet, a dancer, a designer, a musician, and a mysterious organism playfully guide audiences through a ritual to move beyond our realities to encounter new objects, ways of moving, and ways of speaking in an unexpected realm. The powerful exchange between the performers and each audience member transforms the performance into a collective ritual. Together we gather objects, speak in unison, and move. The work is immersive, interactive, and experimental in nature. Heavily based on speculative futures but reactive to current events, this performance is meant to be personally cathartic and communally healing for all.

This work was collaboratively created by U-Meleni Mhlaba-Adebo, Rosa Weinberg, Emily Beattie, and Akili Jamal Haynes.

The work is supported in part by the Live Arts Boston grant from The Boston Foundation.