SPECIAL EFFECTS FESTIVAL curated by Caden Manson and Jemma Nelson

Produced by Contemporary Performance Network

Surveillance Punishment and The Black Psyche
written by M. Lamar with additional text and directed by Tucker Culbertson

January 10 at 9 PM and January 12 at 10 PM

Tickets: $20

Art design and video by Sabin Calvert

An imprisoned black man, sentenced to death for killing his male overseer who was also his lover, reflects on his life. This is the first showing of this multimedia music theater piece that draws loosely from the life of Willie Francis. In 1947, 16-year-old Francis was famously executed twice for the murder of his former employer Andrew Thomas, a Cajun pharmacy owner in St. Martinville, Louisiana. It is alleged that Francis and the 53-year-old Thomas were engaged in a homosexual relationship. Surveillance Punishment and The Black Psyche explores interracial homosex, surveillance and punishment from the Jim Crow south back to the plantation, tracing its legacy in contemporary black life as well as how the state continues its white supremacist surveillance and punishment of black bodied Americans.