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[PAST EVENT] American Pluralism: Storytelling, Social Practice and Performance

February 24, 2025
5pm - 7pm
Location
Phi Beta Kappa (PBK) Memorial Hall, Black Box Theater
601 Jamestown Rd
Williamsburg, VA 23185Map this location
Access & Features
  • Open to the public
Kamara Thomas '96
Kamara Thomas '96

Arts & Sciences and the Reves Center for International Studies present Kamara Thomas '96 in "American Pluralism: Storytelling, Social Practice and Performance," February 24, 2025, at 5pm in the Black Box Theater at Phi Beta Kappa Hall.  The performance is free and open to the public.

Kamara Thomas is a songspeller, ritualist and multidisciplinary storyteller based in Durham, NC. She uses her musical "storyworks" as containers for community storytelling and symbol-making, aimed at the re/invention of collective mythologies and in the pursuit of surprising and disruptive storytelling forms. Kamara's productions are site specific, collaborative and multi-faceted— weaving together music/theatre performance, land-based ritual, communal artmaking and oral history. Kamara will be joined by collaborator and Band of Toughs member Janet Mylott '96.


Kamara is a recent Princeton Arts Fellow, and while at Princeton she debuted the storywork Xulgaria and presented iterations of Tularosa: An American Dreamtime, a collaboration with theater company Band of Toughs which received a 2022 MAP grant and has been featured at Santa Fe Art Institute and Boulder Museum of History. Her film workd includes The Death of Nebuchadnezzar, which was shot in the White Sands Desert of New Mexico, and Good Luck America, which documented an agitprop theatre performance activating public spaces throughout downtown Durham. Kamara also spearheads Country Soul Songbook, a curation and production team rooted in the mission to amplify BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ voices in country and American roots music.

Janet Mylott '96 has held various roles supporting non-profit theatre, devising and playwriting and is currently a member of Boulder, CO theatre company Band of Toughs. Janet served as Director of Muse Works, an annual new play development series for Muse of Fire Productions in NYC and taught at the Young Writer’s Workshop at the University of Virginia. Most recently Janet spent creative time at Princeton University with Kamara Thomas as a collaborator on the multi-disciplinary storywork Tulorosa: An American Dreamtime.

The presentation is the launch of the Spring 2025 Series on Arts & Democracy, cosponsored by Arts & Sciences and the Reves Center for international Studies. The series features four artists whose practice aims to impact democratic processes.

Sponsored by: Arts & Sciences and Reves Center for International Studies