The first solo performance piece I created for Pre-sent/Pres-ent was rise in December,
2008. From my responses to a questionnaire, a theme of a woman’s role emerged and I transformed those ideas into an 8-minute piece about my witnessing (as a child) my grandmother’s work as a domestic for a white family in the South. It is, in part, an exploration of the distance between my grandmother bearing eight children and my child-free existence – the hopes she had for me and all her progeny to rise above stereotype, limitation and expectation. rise, 2008.
