Off Stage Talks: Rehearsals and Remains

A Craft Talk with Diane Exavier, Kyla Searle, and Korinn Annette Jefferies

Thursday, December 16 at 7PM ET

It’s hard to express just how lucky our libraries are now that The Math of Saint Felix has arrived. After all, it’s not every day that somebody hauls off and architects new language for grief. A playwright with poet’s DNA has made a book that is part elegy, part archive, part balm and final family portrait. Whole as an integer. Multi-voiced as choir. This book is choral in gesture but singular in purpose: grieving its plural mothers.  – Angel Nafis, author of BlackGirl Mansion

Diane Exavier, the playwright behind Bernarda’s Daughters, celebrates the release of her genre bending debut poetry collection, The Math of Saint Felix. This book-length lyric attempts to do the math of a woman, a family, and a diaspora, plotting how the sum of one life reveals permutations of many. Hailed by Omi Osun Joni L. Jones (Experiments in a Jazz Aesthetic) as an exceptional work to “be set on bodies willing to chant integers and fractions, leap in geometric flourishes, and multiply and divide with the vibration of live audience,” The Math of Saint Felix is a text that makes room to rehearse, practice, and even play. Exavier is joined by writers Kyla Searle and Korinn Annette Jeffries for an interdisciplinary conversation that invites viewers to reflect on how language creates space for intimate and communal encounters.Rehearsals and Remains RSVP 

The New Group Off Stage features theatrical expressions in different media. This new venture develops and presents original projects at the intersection of art and social engagement, and explores the possibilities of cross-pollination among forms. To coincide, The New Group in partnership with Nō Studios announces a series of online panels and events.