HOT! Festival, Dixon Place, Co-direction by Rui Dun, 2019 (stills from video by Jen Clark)

Upstart Festival, BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange, 2019 (photography by Leonardo March)

[before there was light]

 a multi-medium storytelling project
created by
E. Wray

[before there was light] is a series of (dis)embodied poems about the Crucifixion, desire, betrayal, and growing up queer in an evangelical Christian church. 

previously presented at
Dixon Place
HOT! Festival
July 2019

BAX|Brooklyn Arts Exchange
Upstart Festival, curated by Fernano Maneca and Jillian Peña
(WIP)
March 2019

La MaMa ETC
Call To Action weekend, curated by Nicky Paraiso and Amy Rox Surratt
(WIP)
October 2018

received developmental support from
BAX|Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Upstart Program, 2018-2019 cohort

HOT! Festival
performances by
C. Bain (E’s body)
Miles Butler (chorus)
Mx. Jordan Ho (chorus)
Jai Mohan (chorus)
Efrén Olson-Sánchez (chorus)
Melannie Vasquez-Lara (chorus)
E. Wray (themself)

co-direction by
Rui Dun

sound by
Drew Weinstein

Upstart Festival Showing
performances by
C. Bain (E’s body)
Arnold Bustamante (chorus)
Miles Butler (chorus)
Kathy Huynh-Phan (chorus)
Julian Vargas (chorus)
E. Wray (themself)

associate direction by
Rui Dun

about
This project is driven by an overlapping textual soundscape, set to a series of physical images. Sections of the text are carried by my voice (mostly via voiceover), and sections are carried by a chorus located within the shadows of the performance space.

The chorus is a Multitude, and also a single entity. Their voices work together as in a musical composition; they create a spoken-word-orchestra through repetition and listening closely to the entire group.

This textual soundscape slowly builds and washes over the audience as they watch a series of physical images unfold before them, embodied by two performers contained in a circle of light.

The story begins on a raw/personal/mundane level, and progressively rises up into heightened, queered, Christian mythology.

run time
30 minutes