REQUIEM FOR A STRANGER (2019)
Requiem for a Stranger is a devised work by physical theater company Vagabond Inventions in collaboration with Singer/ Composer Renee Benson. This new, devised creation explores the nature of grief—both personal and cultural—by giving form to how this experience, repressed culturally, exists in the heartspace of humans.
Through movement, image, and music, Requiem explores a constellation of intimate stories—culled from the creators’ personal losses and poetic odes from the likes of Nikki Giovanni and Rainer Maria Rilke. These stories exist in conversation with anthropological and psychological insight into the human experience of grief and mourning. Mimicking the cycles of grief, the stage transforms from an expanse for sacred ritual into a landscape of disorientation—and back again.
Concept: Jenny Sargent, Renee Benson
Director: Jenny Sargent
Design: Jeff Becker
Lighting: Jo Nazro
Music: Renee Benson
Performers: Jenny Sargent, Renee Benson, Grace Booth, Tricia Anderson, Jalisa Roberts
Producer: Vagabond Inventions
Photos: Julie Verlinden and Sarrah Danziger