ART | HEALTH | LIBERATION
THE EXPERIENCE
A gathering of wild hearts, wise women, and holy troublemakers.
This Saturday features:
Vali Forrister, Cynthia Harris, Dia Hodnett, Nichole Perkins, and Heather Laine Talley
🗓️ Saturday, May 24 at 7 PM
🎟️ Tickets: $30 — includes food, drink, and a seat in the circle
https://ci.ovationtix.com/35263/production/1238574
👯♀️ Audience: Women-identifying, 21+
THE EXPERIENCE
isn’t a performance.
It’s an invocation.
Illuminating stories about Black Women’s Health
I have a vision. It has been with me for decades and grew from my experience with traditional West African dance in a community setting, a failed semester in college, dancers becoming family and the Urban Bush Women summer dance institute. I want a life that brings me joy and allows me to be in circles with Black women, listening to stories, dancing, cooking, playing, holding babies, creating, sharing solutions, and being medicine for each other. Music to me was the sound of my mother and her 4 sisters or the power of my aunt performing gospel music with four other women and feeling like a full mass choir. The little girl who first dreamed of being a doctor and a ballerina, figured out a way to make it happen.
Here in 2025, I find myself managing a women’s health research center at an HBCU and researching methods for using qualitative data (interviews and personal stories) to create theater that can heal and educate. I am working with graduate students in public health, adolescents and artists. I bring Black women’s stories to life on stage with the intention to illuminate our brilliance and power.
This year has been busy with art making.
January to April I co-facilitated autobiographical writing circles with justice impacted women at Deborah Johnson Rehabilitation Center. I watched 8 women come to voice in the most beautiful way. The smiles at their final performance will feed my should until we meet again next Spring.
I trained two graduate research assistants in my choreopoem creating methods. In turn, they transformed interview transcripts from research on Black women clergy and their experiences with sexual health education in churches. The monologues were performed as s surprise to the key researcher at the Bold Women, Bold Ideas: Innovation in HIV prevention.
We also presented a choreopoem based on the autobiographical writing of public health students.
Actors Bridge presents The Vagina Monologues at City Winery Nashville on Thursday, 2/13/25. The event is a fundraiser for the outstanding writing and performance program, Act Like a GRRRL!! Doors open at 6pm and show starts at 7:30 pm.
Ticket Link: https://citywinery.com/nashville/events/actors-bridge-ensemble-presents-the-vagina-monol-8fvi76
Very excited to chat with Lydia and Christine about what progressive means in the Nashville Arts scene.
February 1, 2025
Lead artist, Cynthia C. Harris, MPH will serve as playwright and facilitator for proposed choreopoem and performance project, funded in part with support from a Metro Arts THRIVE Project award. In partnership with Leah Alexander, PHD, MPH Director and Associate Professor with Meharry Medical College’s Master of Public Health (MPH) program in the School of Graduate Studies. Thirteen second-year students will work with the lead artist to develop an original choreopoem around the social and political determinants of health as they impact their own lives.
Ms. Harris is uniquely suited for this work based on her 20 years of practice and training in behavioral health, cultural competency, and community engagement. Ms. Harris has led several programs based in autobiographical writing and performance. Ms. Harris has been creating original choreopoems since 2002 and creating a resurgence of the choreopoem for Nashville audiences, with plays like HOW TO CATCH A FLYING WOMAN(2018) and THE CALLING IS IN THE BODY (2022), which have both received high praise from audiences and critics alike. The term “choreopoem” was first coined by playwright Ntozake Shange, a dancer and poet, to describe her groundbreaking work For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf. It has come to represent a body of work that combines personal narrative, oral history, movement, and music. Choreopoems are a particular form of artmaking that speak directly to the experience of being Black or marginalized in America, playing on Black Aesthetics of performance, like call and response. The choreopoem focuses on creating an emotional response from the audience. Ms. Harris believes this emotional response to be an important tool for sharing and processing factors that impact the health of communities of color.
The Creative Team!!!
Beginning with an introduction to choreopoems workshop, created and facilitated by Cynthia C. Harris. MPH, students will be guided through the process of creating autobiographical monologues, songs, and poems from writing prompts. A vocabulary of movement to be included in the final performance will also be developed during the Fall 2023 semester in conjunction with their Health Education and Promotion course, which is required for all second year graduate students. The performance will be further developed and rehearsed during the Spring 2024 semester. Student-participants will be welcomed to perform or the lead artist will identify community artists to join the production as needed.
Actors
Tyler Bibb
Briana Finley
Milton Jackson
Patrićyonna Rodgers
Natalie Tita
Brayonna Townsend
Co- Directors
Cynthia C. Harris
Alicia Haymer
Choreography and Movement Direction
Gabrielle Saliba
Producer and Acting Coach
Vali Forrister
Writers
Sydney Batts
Robyn McDaniel
Mia Barber
Maurice Swift
Dr. Leah Alexander
Tredarius Lassiter
Kendra Bettis
Kaylah Dowdell
Jayla Williams
Sariah Harris
Elijah Johnson
Doresha Robinson
Alisha Puri
Alexis Cunningham
Based on the Act Like a GRRRL model, Big GRRRL is for female-identifying adults over 18. Participants write autobiographical narratives in response to prompts from Vali and Cynthia, then share their writing at our weekly meetings, giving and receiving supportive feedback along the way. The program concludes with public performances of 2 selections from the many pieces created during this 6-week program. You choose which writings you are ready to share in front of a live audience.
This is a 6-week intensive that meets 3 hours per week plus 2 rehearsals and 2 performances. All sessions take place at the Actors Bridge Studio.
Memorization is encouraged but not required.
No prerequisites.
Led by Vali Forrister and Cynthia Harris
Tuesdays
Jan 30-Mar 5
6-9 p.m.
With rehearsals Mar 7-8
Performances Mar 9-10
$475
A failed journalist hired by the Federal Writers Project in 1932, catches hold of a highly sought meeting with a former slave who mysteriously acquired his former master’s fortune, including over 100 acres of land. Inspired by Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights and the Slave Narratives gathered by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930’s, Narrative of the Life of Cedric Bartholomew, tells an epic story of legacy, love, and tragedy.
We need a mayor who supports an increase in funding the arts from 0.17% to at least 1% of the overall budget.
Cynthia C. Harris, Guest Columnist | June 13, 2023
Growing up in Nashville, my first experience with the arts was through ballet with Dancearts Centre directed by Ms. Peggy Williams. She exposed hundreds of African American girls from a range of economic experiences to ballet for over 30 years. I first learned with Ms. Williams in a house, and later in a building on Buchanan that still stands today.
I’ve been thinking about those classes and Ms. Williams a lot lately. North Nashville has always been filled with professionals dedicated to sharing their creative gifts with future generations. These have often been labors of love, often maintained with personal finances and the small fees collected from families. They offered arts programs and education through their connections to local schools, churches, and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). They were fixtures in our community and generations of young people benefited.
I recently found a program from our recital in 1982. I see names of then girls, now women whom I admire and respect. I see accomplished women representing a number of professions, parents, clergy, and leaders. I am reminded of the deep necessity of resources, spaces, and infrastructure when it comes to making art in community.
This summer I’ll co-lead Actors Bridge Ensemble’s Act Like a Grrrl program where we serve about 12 female identifying students ages 12-18, like we have each summer for the past 19 years. We are sometimes overlooked for grant funding because our numbers are small. We keep our program small because we want each young person to have all the attention and support needed to come to voice during our time together.
After working primarily in the public health field for 20 years while writing and performing on the side, I moved my passion for theater front and center this year. I’ll continue consulting with local arts organizations, performing, building community, and creating plays. Still I worry about how plausible it is to sustain myself long term as a theater artist.
The future of the arts in Nashville matters deeply to me. I am clear that we need a mayor who supports an increase in funding the arts from 0.17% to at least 1% of the overall budget. Dallas, Austin, Cleveland, and Phoenix (cities growing at the same rate as Nashville) all have higher arts budgets with greater per capita funding for the arts.
These cities recognize that artists create the fabric of our communities and they all invest substantially more in the arts. They understand something we as Music City and Athens of the South must reflect in our policies. The arts enrich our lives through more than the bottom line, uplifting every aspect of life.
We need a dedicated funding source for the arts. We need to make sure the funds are distributed equitably so that independent artists, artists of color, and small arts organizations have an opportunity to innovate and thrive.
We also need an infrastructure in place for artists that nurtures and sustains us. We need representation for the creative class in all its vibrant facets, and we need to reinvest in the arts and artists who bring so much real value to Nashville.
Arts and culture are part of our civic rights and are integral to our identity.
Healing Waters Productions 