TNB (2013)

The action takes us on a disturbing, high-energy, graphic experience that is like attending a heady African American Studies lecture on the set of a blaxploitation film, performed in a former Dallas drug house. Paint chips and discarded plywood litter the broken sidewalk that leads from the empty back parking lot through knee-high weeds to the house where local performance art collective Dead White Zombies' newest site-specific performance installation takes place. Video projections play on various monitors. Loud Rap music surrounds us. Mama is cooking and cleaning in the kitchen. There is no way to prepare for this piece, except by perhaps brushing up on your Cornel West, W.E.B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, Malcolm X and H Rap Brown. Be prepared to confront the ghosts of your upbringing, whether they manifest more obviously in the form of White Guilt or still-stinging, if tacit, colonial oppression. No one is getting off the hook here.