Explorations, sketches and partially-completed works.

Whether finished or unfinished, each of these works begun during the pandemic, has raised questions and paved the roads for future creations. This experimental mindset took me out of my comfort zone all the way to a live performance with puppets I designed, and projects combining handmade and digital art. 

HOMEMADE VIRTUAL PERFORMANCE: 5 minute live performance created for a Brooklyn College assignment. Fall 2020.

ABOUT: For Performance by Design, taught by lighting and scenic designer, Prof. Justin Townsend, we had to create a performance piece based on a book. Inspired by, One Thousand and One Arabian Nights, I decided to explore the relationship between my Moroccan paternal grandmother and Scheherazade. Are they similar? I had to find out through the process of creation.

MEDIA:  This is a multimedia project played in three screens/boxes in gallery-view on Zoom. A video plays throughout the presentation in one box. In a second box, there is a small performance behind a homemade Moroccan gate-like structure with a looped video projected on the white walls surrounding the gate. The story of Scheherazade is told via a second performance in a third box! The accessories on the table in the third box are used as “puppets” to support the story. This piece was written, designed, edited and performed by myself. 

This class was not recorded.

HOMEMADE VIRTUAL LIVE PERFORMANCE: Created for a Brooklyn College class assignment. Fall 2020.

ABOUT: This collaboration was inspired by Edward Gorey’s alphabets and was shown in gallery view on Zoom. There were four gallery boxes and three New York based designers, including myself. Each of us presented a different set of letters representing experiences we lived through when we each moved to New York City. The fourth box contains a video of the narrator, Gorey the Cat. Each designer designs their own unique platform. My platform was a toy-theater-like box, representing Manhattan in the fall, when I moved to New York. The other two boxes represented Queens in winter and Brooklyn in summer.

MEDIA: For this production I made everything by hand, except Gorey the Cat a cat puppet I bought and then dressed up to look like Edward Gorey. 

HOMEMADE VIRTUAL PERFORMANCE: This 5 minute live performance was created for a Brooklyn College class assignment. Fall 2020.

ABOUT: For Performance by Design taught by lighting and scenic designer, Prof. Justin Townsend, we had to create a performance piece based on a podcast. I chose GOOP’s Beauty Closet podcast episode with New York-based dermatologist, Dr. Robert Anolik. Dr. Anolik shares some of the most popular, effective and non-surgical procedures he uses and recommends to maintain a younger, fresher and smoother look. Forever Young is about a woman who decides to get work done on her face as her birthday approaches. 

MEDIA:  This piece was shown in speaker view on Zoom. I used the original podcast sound and added music between scenes. I created the background, puppets and did the sound editing.

This performance was not recorded. The video below was taken by a classmate directly from her screen. 

HOMEMADE VIRTUAL PERFORMANCE: This 5 minute live performance was created for a Brooklyn College class assignment. Fall 2020.

ABOUT: For Performance by Design taught by lighting and scenic designer, Prof. Justin Townsend, we had to create a performance piece based on a newspaper article. At the time, I came across the obituary of author Gabriel García Márquez’s wife, Mercedes Barcha. The couple met when they were kids and later she became his wife and his muse. Homenaje a Gabriel García Márquez shows Mercedes Barcha dressed as a Greek muse at different times in her life. It starts when she was young in their home town of Sucre, Colombia, and goes forward to when she was married with two sons. Iconic elements of Gabriel García Márquez stories take the viewer through the couples’ life  together in chronological order:

• Rooster: No One Writes to the Colonel (1961)

• Book (Macondo) and phrase: One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967)

• Caribbean (far right): Love in the Time of Cholera (1985)

• Picture of Simón Bolîvar: The General in His Labyrinth (1989)

MEDIA: This piece was shown in speaker view on Zoom. The background, puppets and sound editing were created by me.

This performance was not recorded. The video below was taken by a classmate directly from her screen.