Note before the post: This article is great in highlighting a specific case of creative activism in the streets of New York City, but also gives some contextual background to how this project manifested.
On a sidewalk in the Village in downtown Manhattan, an African-American woman leans on her elbows and knees, wearing only black underpants. Scrawled in black marker all over her body are the words "Ain't I a Woman?"
Few opera choruses are as moving as the one a group of prisoners sings in Act I of Beethoven’s “Fidelio.” Released temporarily from their cells, the inmates almost whisper a hymnlike paean to liberty: “Oh, what a joy to breathe freely again in the open air.”
In this solo work, Gómez-Peña tests brand new material dealing with radical citizenship and what he terms “imaginary activism,” combining live art, literature, theory, and pedagogy in a wonderfully strange mix. Not one solo performance is ever the same.