Brava! For Women in the Arts Artist In Residence, Rhodessa Jones performs
The Resurrection of SHE
March 28 – April 7, 2013
Special Gala Performance, Saturday, March 30th.
Pre-show champagne and savory appetizers at 7:00! After show dessert and champagne.
Scroll down for video excerpt of performance
Read the review by SF Chronicle's, Robert Hurwitt
In celebration of National Women's History Month, Artist in Residence, RHODESSA JONES, will perform her new solo work, The Resurrection of SHE. a multidisciplinary, interactive performance.
Close to seven years of residency and performance activity in South Africa and America has been captured in photographs, video and audio recordings that will be featured in the performance - which unites the art of documemoire, multi media installation, and musical theater performance. “SHE” explores the interstices of the global feminine narrative- both visually and aurally, in search of the universality of the human experience. “SHE” is a passageway into lives normally hidden from and forgotten by society - a revelatory journey of redemption and hope. “SHE” carves out a route to healing and towards a healthier future.
As one of San Francisco’s preeminent performers, Rhodessa’s work with her company Cultural Odyssey and The Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women have put her in the forefront of artists working in the field of “arts as social activism”. . At the center of The Resurrection of SHE will be the ongoing work that Rhodessa conducts with disenfranchised populations around the world including her most recent work in Johannesburg, South Africa working with female inmates at the Naturena Women’s Correctional Center and her recent work with HIV positive women in San Francisco.
Rhodessa will collaborate with visual artist/lighting designer Stephanie Johnson, set designer, Pam Peniston, musician/composer Idris Ackamoor, and musician/sound designer David Molina to create the work.
Rhodessa Jones is Co-Artistic Director of the critically acclaimed San Francisco performance company Cultural Odyssey. An actress, teacher, singer, and writer, Jones is also the founder and director of the Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women. On January 29, 2013 San Francisco Mayor Lee presented the 2013 Mayor's Art Award to Rhodessa Jones for her “lifetime of artistic achievement and enduring commitment to the role of the arts in civic life”. Rhodessa was selected as an "ARTS ENVOY" by the U.S. Department of State, Educational and Cultural Affairs Bureau in June/July 2012. She received grant support to journey to South Africa to continue her work in collaboration with Urban Voices Festival inside the Naturena Women's Prison in Johannesburg, South Africa and then journey on to participate in the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, South Africa. She has received many awards for her work including a United States Artist Fellowship to support her work in 2007, an Honorary Doctorate from California College of the Arts, a San Francisco Bay Guardian GOLDIE Lifetime Achievement Award, an Otto Rene Castillo Award for Political Theater, and a San Francisco Foundation Community Leadership Award.
“The Resurrection of She”, is funded in part by The National Endowment for the Arts, Brava! For Women in the Arts, the James Irvine foundation, Zellerbach Family Foundation, and a Individual Artist Commission from The San Francisco Art Commission’s CEG Program. Additional funding for Cultural Odyssey provided by Grants for the Arts, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, The San Francisco Art Commission, the James Irvine foundation, The San Francisco Foundation, The California Arts Council, The Lia Fund, The Grousbeck Family Foundation, The California Endowment, The Louis M. Rabinowitz Foundation, and Individual donors.