MEDIATHEK

"No More water" is a performance installation contextualized in the form of a church service inspired by the writings of James Baldwin, and in particular his treatise on race, America, art, and citizenship The Fire Next Time.  
 
 It challenges its audience to think about the issues plaguing human advancement, and asks what can create social change?  Created by musician Meshell Ndegeocello and director Charlotte Brathwaite along with a team of artists, musicians, and social activists, it is anchored in and yet freed from the familiar.  Designed to be performed nationally and internationally in a variety of spaces by a core group of collaborators alongside local artists and activists who are specially invited to testify.
 
 Celebrated as a deity, Baldwin's voice underscores the event, his writing illuminates the performance and as the show progresses its unique set of rituals, evolves into a celebration of collective catharsis. The performance erupts through offerings and communion - mediated along the way by an evolving musical score that invites participants to raise their voice in song, prayer, and protest - and subsides in poetic reflection not on Baldwin’s texts, but for them, for what they hold and how they hold us - for the love they make possible. Baldwin’s work is both of his time and hauntingly timeless, and because of its endurance and acutely felt relevance today, the project uses his words as a lens to re-interpret and find meaning in our contemporary world.