Sibyl Kempson

12 Shouts to the Ten Forgotten Heavens

Friday, September 22, 2017, 12 – 4:30pm

Location

Whitney Museum

Begins in the lobby at 12pm
Performances begin outside at 1pm, 2pm, and 3pm

Co-hosted by the Whitney Museum of American Art and High Line Art

12 Shouts to the Ten Forgotten Heavens is a three-year iterative performance project by American playwright, director, and performer Sibyl Kempson, with her theater company 7 Daughters of Eve Thtr. & Perf. Co. Presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art on 12 occasions, 12 Shouts marks each solstice and equinox occurring between March 2016 and December 2018, creating a new ceremonial calendar and a contemporary mythology.

Kempson’s 2017 Autumnal Equinox performance, co-hosted by the Whitney and High Line Art, begins with doll-making workshops in the lobby of the Whitney, traverses the museum’s outdoor area, and culminates in an itinerant performance by eight dancers on the High Line. Elaborating on themes explored through her previous performances — sacrifice, death, and reaping — Kempson further delves into ritual and animist narratives while also celebrating the flora on the High Line with the performers’ costumes designed by visual artist Suzanne Bocanegra.

Artist bio

Sibyl Kempson (b. 1973, Pequannock, New Jersey) lives and works in New York. Kempson is a playwright, director, and performer. She founded 7 Daughters of Eve Thtr. & Perf. Co., presenting “Let Us Now Praise Susan Sontag” at the Abrons Arts Center, New York (2015). A resident playwright at New Dramatists, her play “Fondly, Collette Richland,” a collaboration with Elevator Repair Service, premiered at New York Theatre Workshop (2015). Her plays have been presented in Minneapolis, Baltimore, Omaha, Bonn, and Austin. She was a United States Artists Rockefeller Fellow (2014), a McKnight National Resident and Commissionee (2013 – 2014), and a MacDowell Colony Fellow (2010).

Support

Major support for High Line Art comes from Donald R. Mullen, Jr. and The Brown Foundation, Inc. of Houston. Additional funding is provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. High Line Art is supported, in part, with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the New York City Council and from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.