Musical Chairs/A game of chance

Performance

2021

Sand and ocean water

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I invited people to the beach to build chairs out of sand for a game of musical chairs. After 3.5 hours of building together I began to play the game solo, singing a local song about displacement while interrupting with excerpts from a speech given by Barbados’ Prime Minister, where she pleaded with larger nations to see that we are not disposable people in the climate crisis. This performance was an allegorical work highlighting the unpredictability and fragility of the Caribbean in the face of climate change. 

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Excerpt from performance dialogue:

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You tell me tuh forget

dat my granmudah was born right here so

All right I say I shall go

yuh tell me tuh forget

it is there

I want my own children to grow

All right I say I shall go

-Mighty Gabby

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“Just as we find it abhorrent today to contemplate, far less support, removing

freedom and choice from other human beings, so must we also recognize that true

freedom also requires changing the structural imbalances i n power and wealth,”

-Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Amor Mottley

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