An Auricular Visions Production, in residence at North American Cultural Laboratory, June 14 – July 3, 2021
RSVP for work-in-progress presentation July 3, 6pm

Unsettling is an aspiration of breath, an unearthing, a recording, a reflection, and a projection…

…it is a continually evolving story about migration to, from, and around North America — one part listening project, one part full-length play, one part performance moving sale.

listening project

A gathering of oral histories of arrivals and departures, how we (individuals) came to be here from our ancestral homes, or came to be uprooted from them, tracing our landings and embarkations, delineating the routes of these journeys, to seek a common “rootedness” that supports and lifts all of us.

full-length play

A devised performance incorporating puppetry, movement, and music, with minimal text, that explores the broad-stroked history of peoples' arrivals to this continent through the specific details of individual narratives. The play will feature perspectives of those arriving and of those who were already here (having arrived or being descended from those who arrived some time before), with vignettes detailing the stories of performers' personal her/histories. It will ask us to reflect on the causes and the impacts of these movements, and to imagine future movements that bind us closer rather than segregating and discriminating. All content will be contingent upon who participates, because participants will speak from their own experience and for their own identified communities.

performance moving sale

An ad hoc micro-community on the move, a migratory, migrant social experiment in alternative economies and community structures, to be developed and revised in each iteration. The set-up is a migratory town, that has been uprooted and is preparing for its next migration. Imagine a combination of yard sale tables, tents, and an array of essential services one would find in any self sufficient town (school, infirmary or health clinic, barber, tailor, general store…).

Auricular Visions

Founded by multi-disciplinary artist, activist, and director Tracy Broyles, Auricular Visions seeks to bring people together to listen and hear, to watch and see, to share and learn and celebrate each other through the arts of spectacle: puppetry, pageantry, and playwriting. The creative work is rooted in ethnographic research: family histories, folksong, and other cultural practices, additionally forming a nascent library of orally-transmitted narratives.

Auricular Visions is fiscally sponsored by ENGN.