As part of her Queer South(s) artist's residency, Sharon Bridgeforth will give a special performance. Tickets are not required.
before you go: an Offering is a is queer, Southern Spirited, citified, Black performance installation filled with audio recordings, live performance, and invitations to those present to engage in their own memories, healing rituals and lineage mapping. Performers sing, move, tell stories, speak many languages, call the audience to process, build altars – celebrate life. All present are responsible for the Journey. Told with a shimmy/a tilt/a pause/a flicker/a glimmer/a gesture/a laugh/and a shake . . . before you go: an Offering is Inspired by transgressive tools for thriving that Black Southern elders have long used to queerly Open portals/reach back/heal/push forward - change.
*Note: this performance will begin in the lobby of the Drama Building. Audience members will be guided to the performance installation.
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Sharon Bridgeforth, a writer and performing artist, is a United States Artists Fellow, winner of Yale's Windham Campbell Prize in Drama, Playwrights’ Center Core Member, McKnight National Fellow, and a New Dramatists alumna. A Doris Duke Performing Artist, she has received support from Creative Capital, MAP Fund, the National Performance Network, and more. Her work is featured in: We Are Each Other's Liberation, Black and Asian Feminist Solidarities; The Yale Review; Teaching Black: The Craft of Teaching on Black Life and Literature; Mouths of Rain an Anthology of Black Lesbian Thought; and Feminist Studies. Sharon's bull-jean & dem/dey back and All These Things: A Conversation by Sharon Bridgeforth & Daniel Alexander Jones are published by 53rd State Press. Sharon's new book, Before You Go: An Offering, was released in August 2025 by Tripwire Harlot Press.