Support Nala & Ava's First Major Stage Production

OUR GOAL

Hey! My name is Nala, and I'm a musician, composer, choreographer, and stage director. Alongside my friend and co-director Ava, I am seeking support to produce our first major stage production: a theatrical live music performance titled Cape, sponsored by The Kitchen, Montez Press, and Abrons Arts Center.

We have already secured funds for artist fees, production design, and covid safety protocol. We are raising money to cover venue and staffing costs to sell show tickets to Black queer/trans folks at little to no cost.

OUR STORY

Nala

I have always loved to perform. When I was ten years old, I began dance training at a small studio in Virginia called Center Stage. Across hundreds of hip-hop, tap, jazz, ballet, and contemporary dance lessons, my teachers cultivated in me a deep reverence for the craft of performance. Performance was a place where I could radically transform and invite others to do the same.

As I grew older, I developed my own visions for the stage. I moved to New York to study music and composition at NYU, learning as much from other Black queer/trans underground artists as I did in the classroom. I'm lucky to call many of those artists my collaborators and even luckier to call some of them my friends. I've been fortunate to create works for stages ranging from the Tribeca Film Festival to Times Square billboards. Artistically, my drive has always been a search for beauty, and conceptually, I'm most interested in the ways Black people render meaning from a world at odds with our existence.

Every major career step I've made in the 13 years since I stepped into my first dance class was made possible through the support of family, friends, peers, and mentors. For that, I am so grateful. With your support again, I can take my next major step with a piece I've been generating since 2020: a "muso-poetical" play called Cape.

Ava

Most of my fondest memories of childhood are block parties, concerts in the park, and church lunches. These gatherings fed my soul and gave me purpose by showing me community and the magical spontaneity of people being with each other in their wholeness. In a time when community public space is being over-policed or eradicated, I am dedicated to cultivating as many of these open spaces as possible. This is why I love theatre: togetherness is built into its architecture and artform. I also love live performances that make me gasp, laugh, cry, fart, and call out. I am an artist who tries to recreate these conditions for others to enjoy beautifully.

When I was first learning theatre-making, I wondered why people never felt as compelled to vocalize at the theater as they do sports or even concerts. Later I realized the industry abided by a code of respectability established by white, upper-class patrons who often shut marginalized people out of these spaces. It wasn’t until I attended the PHTS studio at NYU that I had the agency to foster a performance community with other black artists. When working on those shows, the audience-to-performer connection strengthened. I live for every “I know that’s right”, “uuuuuh uhhhh”, “NO”, “mmmmm”, *tongue pop*, *scream*, and *sniffle* that rings out from the chairs.

With Cape, I’m interested in honing the space in which the audience and the performers are together in a collective ritual: one that reminds us of our power to play with the ephemeral nature of time to shift towards better futures even while the previous world as we know it ends. I am deeply appreciative of any support you can offer to make Cape a reality.

CAPE: A NEW KIND OF PLAY

Cape follows five characters who live on an unnamed coastal landmass in the early 1500s. One day, a portal door materializes on the cape; the passageway allows one to instantly traverse thousands of miles of global distance. Braced against this new apprehension of the world, the five characters (the Lovers, the Cartographer, the Conductor, and the Voice) grapple with world-mapping, self-coordination, and relation in a suddenly global world.

The play comprises several sequences of live music performance, dance, poetry, and theatre, accompanied by projection-based set design for the portal door. The coastal locale depicted in the play is based on southern African ecologies that made contact with Portuguese colonizers at the turn of the 16th century. Though, my focus is less historical and more about what kind of ontological reckonings indigenous lives on the cape undergo when their "finistère" becomes a point of "relay."

COSTS & BUDGET BREAKDOWN

Production Technical Staff - $3,115

Video Designer - $1,000

Front of House Staff (venue flat rate) - $490

Production Materials (venue flat rate) - $250

TOTAL: $4,855

Any funds raised past $4,855 will be put toward complimentary tickets for Black queer/trans attendees of our show.

OUR (INCREDIBLE) TEAM

Nala Duma (Lamb) | Creator, Co-Director & Co-Writer

R&B/soul music, contemporary dance, and ecofuturism comprise Lamb's artistic vision: where the visceral meets the cerebral; where the natural enacts the synthetic. The musician, composer, choreographer, and director explores Blackness as the break that might rupture our attachments to Worlds, territories, and Man. Steeped in the aesthetic, conceptual, and political tradition of modern Black thinkers before them, Lamb's thesis is this: in a world wrought through violence, to salvage some beauty from it is to seek truth within it.

Notable works/recognition: Tribeca Film Festival Selection (LaJuné McMillian) [composer], Times Square Arts: Midnight Moment (McMillian) [dancer], FADER: "10 songs you need in your life," HEAR US Tisch Creative Research Award, Vans Channel 66 live performance, MUSE Danspace Residency.

Website: https://www.biglittlelamb.com/

Ava Elizabeth Novak | Co-Director & Co-Writer

Ava Elizabeth Novak is film and theatre artist dedicated to creating spaces that center black/queer people and foster the intersection of arts and community. Notable works include: Directing: Wetlands (writ. AriDy Nox, Live & In Color), Do You Love Me (writ. Erika Larson, Playmachine Playfest at El Barrio), Park (Lifeworld, Exponential Festival) Oye Group's Shakespeare on the Block Summer of 2021, asst. directing Untitled (1-5) (The Shed, dir. Nazareth Hassan + Talia Paulette Oliveras), assistant directing Untitled Mockumentary Project (Ars Nova, dir. nicHi douglas). Video/Editing: Lost Footage of a Blk Future (in partnership with Talia Paulette-Olivera + Nia Farrell, Contemporary Arts London) and In Light (in partnership w/ Itohan Edoloyi + nicHi douglas, JACK NY). They also are a producing coordinator at Dr. Barbara Ann Teer’s National Black Theatre in Harlem.

amani | Keys

amani is a conduit for sound(s) that challenge the conditioned self. Credits include: Talib Kweli and Madlib. Notable performances include The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon & SWAY'S UNIVERSE.

13th Law | Guitar & Bass

Multi-instrumentalist. Credits include: KeiyaA, Dianna Lopez, Marcela Avelina, and Baby Fang. Notable performances include NPR Tiny Desk.

Jessica Howard | Vocals

OUR SUPPORTERS

Cape would not be possible without the immense support of these NYC institutions. Thank you!

The Kitchen

Montez Press Public Radio (Stacy Skolnik & Thomas Laprade)

Abrons Arts Center

EVERY DOLLAR COUNTS, EVERY SHARE COUNTS

Whether you're able to donate $5 or $50, your contribution means the WORLD. Cape is the piece Ava and I have always dreamed of. And we're finally ready to make it happen. Thank you for your consideration and support!