PRIVY | 2016-2019 | 1 DANCER | 40 MINUTES
Privy is a multimedia solo work conceived and performed by Deborah Goffe (founder/director, Scapegoat Garden) in collaboration with Kelly Silliman (associate director) and Ritz Ubides (technical director). Framed within an intimate salon format, Deborah has welcomed more than 130 guests into her Holyoke home over the course of 5 events between December 2016 and September 2019. Through this process of sharing food, conversation and personal story, guests have been invited to collectively practice holding space for others’ vulnerabilities in this and other contexts.
What is catalyzed when we bring another into personal confidence around unspoken familial and societal legacies? What do we choose to disclose, what do we keep for ourselves, and what is risked on either side? What role do intersectional identities play in shaping one’s level of risk? How is healing (for storyteller and witness) catalyzed by ritualizing personal experience through performance practice in this way? What are the technologies of care, hospitality, and relationality, and what do they afford as us we build threads of connectivity between past, present and future?
all gallery photos below by Kelly Silliman
PRIVY INTERNET-MEDIATED PERFORMANCE SALON | 2021
On February 7, 2021, Deborah presented Privy as an internet mediated performance in partnership with the Center for Afrofuturist Studies for an intimate audience via Zoom.
Simultaneous with Deborah’s performance for Zoom guests, André M. Zachery streamed a digitally augmented version in-real time for digital passersby on Youtube.
The videos below reflect those simultaneous experiences …
The LAST Wednesday of Winter at Wesleyan with The Davis Sisters
In 2021, The Davis Sisters (Alexis Davis and Joy Davis) collaborated with Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts to bring their unique brand of dance, theater, and comedy back to Connecticut virtually with a continuation of their digital variety show “Summer Sunday with the Sisters.” This episode of “A Winter Wednesday at Wesleyan” features reflections on life, work, and artistic practice during COVID-19 with their fellow artists from 2020’s “New England Dance on Tour:” Scapegoat Garden’s Deborah Goffe; Subject:Matter’s Ian Berg; and Nicole Stanton. The episode also features Wesleyan Professor and Chair of the Dance Department Hari Krishnan, Tamara Rivera, and Suzanne Sadler (Technical Director/Manager of Center for the Arts Theater). “Winter Wednesday” is a celebration of the resilience of both the New England dance and Wesleyan communities during the pandemic.
The video below is cued at the moment Hari Krishnan asks the question, “How do you make a virtual piece?” He is answered by a conversation between Deborah, Alex and Joy about the experience of creating and witnessing the internet mediated version of “Privy” weeks earlier.
