Anna Martine-Whitehead

Performances will take place at The Chocolate Factory Theater, 38-33 24th Street, Long Island City.

Co-presented with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics.

FORCE! is an opera, but what is an opera? If opera means “big work,” what could be blacker? In this big work, characters become fractals for the abundant relationships blooming in the shadows of the state and carceral power. In this big work, a constellation imagines a strange sisterhood with the power to disintegrate walls.

Since late 2019, FORCE! has developed as an iterative re-imagining of performance practice, constantly re-centering care, consent, queer divergence, and rest. The FORCE! constellation re-imagines rehearsal protocols and lets loose discipline to build an abolition feminist theatre practice. This project gathers lessons from lichens, direct actions, mutual aid societies, and other emergent strategies to leverage sound and movement as vectors for processing state violence and racial capitalism. As audiences travel with performers through space, sound, and silence, the boundaries between them become increasingly less important. Using the prison as a particular prism through which we can bear witness to the ways carceral systems replicate themselves, FORCE! is also an attempt to abolish the Prison Industrial Complex in our heads, hearts, and houses.

Co-composers: Angel Bat Dawid, Ayanna Woods, Anna Martine Whitehead. Music Direction: Ayanna Woods, Teiana Davis. Dancers: Jenn Po’Chop Freeman, Zachary Nicol, Rahila Coats. Musicians: Eva Supreme, Daniella Pruitt, Nexus J, Kai Black, Wyatt Waddell, Teiana Davis. Costume Designer: Sky Cubacub.

A Note On Ticket Prices

The Chocolate Factory Theater now offers a tiered ticketing price structure, with the goal of remaining accessible to every person who wishes to attend our events while acknowledging the very real value of the service – namely, artistic and administrative labor – that a ticket purchase represents; and adjusting for the realities of inflation and the ever-increasing cost of…everything.

We ask that you select the option that best reflects your individual circumstances. This is not a “pay what you wish” scenario; rather, it’s “pay as much as your circumstances allow”. For context: in the absence of outside funding, a true cost ticket to a Chocolate Factory performance would be $275.

Our tiered options are as follows:

1. $35 (base price – the equivalent of one hour of labor for a lead artist, performer, design collaborator or technician)
2. $20
3. $10
4. $50
5. $100
6. $275 (true cost ticket)

Our intention here is not to create walled gardens or tiers of access based on monetary status; we’re merely trying to make our practice – of paying artists, technicians and administrative staff a fair wage (more than 80% of our annual budget goes to labor, fyi) – more sustainable (or truthfully, less unsustainable), while remaining (we hope!) accessible and welcoming to all.

As a ticket buyer, you’ll receive the same experience regardless of the price you pay. It’s general admission for everyone.