{"product_id":"anna-martine-whitehead-force-an-opera-in-three-acts","title":"Anna Martine Whitehead: FORCE! an opera in three acts","description":"\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eCOMING SOON!\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003eSeptember 2026, English, 6 x 9 in\u003cbr\u003eDesign: Sming Sming Books\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003eEdition of 250\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003eSimply defined as a “big work,” an opera is a song cycle capacious enough to contain multitudes. \u003cstrong\u003eAnna Martine Whitehead’s \u003ci\u003eFORCE! an opera in three acts\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e is a big work of strange sisterhoods, featuring fractaline characters with the power to disintegrate walls. A meditation on often-overlooked spaces—prison waiting rooms—\u003ci\u003eFORCE!\u003c\/i\u003e travels through silence, sound, and rhythm to dissipate borders between performers and audience members.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003eThis accompanying libretto, written by Whitehead, features the script of the performance interwoven with extensive footnotes, forming a complex constellation of black study, making, and being. \u003ci\u003eFORCE! an opera in three acts \u003c\/i\u003ewas presented throughout 2024 at The Chocolate Factory Theater\/Vera List Center for Art and Politics in New York, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, REDCAT in Los Angeles, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"s1\"\u003eBeginning in 2019, \u003ci\u003eFORCE!\u003c\/i\u003e developed into an iterative re-imagining of performance practice, re-centering care, consent, queer divergence, and rest. The creative team re-imagined rehearsal protocols and released disciplinary categories to build an abolitionist feminist theater practice. Gathering lessons from lichens and other emergent strategies, direct actions, and mutual aid societies, the project leveraged sound and movement as vectors for processing state violence and racial capitalism. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"p1\"\u003eThis publication brings together contributions by \u003cstrong\u003eSuchi Branfman, Re’al Christian, Jenn Freeman, Maria Gaspar\u003c\/strong\u003e, and \u003cstrong\u003eDavid Thomson,\u003c\/strong\u003e with essays and artistic interventions made alongside the “emergent opera.” Using the prison as a particular prism through which we can bear witness to the ways carceral systems replicate themselves, \u003ci\u003eFORCE!\u003c\/i\u003e, its notes, and the attendant collection of responses mark an attempt to abolish the Prison Industrial Complex in our heads, hearts, and houses.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sming Sming Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50514091376833,"sku":null,"price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/2789\/2198\/files\/anna-martine-whitehead_FORCE-an-opera-in-three-acts_1.jpg?v=1787199270","url":"https:\/\/www.smingsming.com\/products\/anna-martine-whitehead-force-an-opera-in-three-acts","provider":"Sming Sming Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}