T.N.B.
Video & Media Design (2013)
Directed by Thomas Riccio, staged in a former crack house, West Dallas, TX
Immersion theatre/performance by DWZ Collective
T.N.B. is a world premiere site-specific performance installation inspired by indigenous healing rituals. Spooky, played by David Jeremiah, returns home after a botched home invasion to find his house inhabited, by ghosts both real and imagined. Laying in wait is Roosevelt Jones, played by Justin Locklear, who is Spooky’s “identical” twin brother. Roosevelt is also a white “cracker” who variously supports, mocks, and challenges Spooky to consider his life, his performance of blackness and self-destruction. Also inhabiting the Spooky house is Charleene, played by Rhianna Mack, as the helping spirit of the African-American woman. Mama, played by Becki McDonald, inhabits the kitchen, and is always steady and supportive as she pushes Spooky to face his demons. The trans-historical figure of Storm Crow, played by well-known slam artist Jonathan “GNO” White, has been wandering America for 500 years and moves Spooky to his transcendence.
T.N.B. places its audiences inside a former west Dallas drug stash house and each performance will be limited to 20 audience members who will inhabit the house, able to move and follow the “healing in the hood” unfold. The house is a metaphoric environ for that in which we all inhabit. Urban America. In the end, Riccio's lesson is one of ritualistic healing, against all odds, and against miring self-destruction. But, despite the work's high-minded message, compelling arguments stand against artistic portrayals of racial violence -- both physical and verbal. Should such be avoided at the risk of inadvertent glamorization or at the accusation of gratuitous emotional pornography? Who suffers collateral damage? What are the consequences and who bears the responsibility?
Design Team: Scot Gresham-Lancaster (sound), Dale Seeds (settings), Mona Kasra (video & media), and Lori McCarty (costumes, props). Michael Cleveland (production manager).
“T.N.B. is frightening, sickening, humorous, unnerving, disturbing, and astonishing. It is, arguably, the most significant artistic contribution to the Dallas community because of its experimentation, radicalism, and fearlessness. Dead White Zombies' T.N.B. is a labor of love.” —Pegasus News
“This past weekend I was a part of the most electrifying and brutal theater performances of my theater going life. It was all thanks to a group called Dead White Zombies. The performance I lived was an immersion piece staged in an abandoned crack house in Dallas. And it defies all the words. I have spent the last three days desperately searching for ways to describe it.” —K102 FM Radio
“Dead White Zombies might amaze or enrage you with its immersive production of T.N.B. Either way, chalk one up for a theater that's shaking things up. It's epic, cinematic and gut-wrenching.” —Theatre Jones
Link to video “T.N.B. Experiences”
Photos by Alicia Eykilis
