Conceived and directed by Alexis Riley
kin • song: ode to disability ancestors is a digital performance ritual, a cybernetic seance. Through monologue, dialogue, puppetry, song and dance, we will join creative forces to call upon the ghosts of our disability ancestors, waking them from their unmarked graves to join us in an act of mourning, celebration and care. Here, in the sacred timespace of performance, we will name them, claim them and honor their brilliance, all before (finally) laying them to rest.

This devised production invites us to grapple with the long history of ableism in Austin, in Texas and in the United States. It demands that we answer that history, accepting a kind of responsibility to those who came before. Finally, it asks us to care for their memory and in that caring, dream a more just future.