Chicago, IL
I came here to weep
a performance installation led by Yanira Castro, co-created with the public
Created by Yanira Castro/a canary torsi Interactive Sound Design by Stephan Moore Installation Design by Kathy Couch Production Manager LD DeArmon Creative Producer Ariel Lembeck First presented at Brooklyn’s Chocolate Factory Theatre in 2023, I came here to weep is a performance installation led by Bessie-Award winning choreographer and interdisciplinary artist Yanira Castro, and co-created with the public. It is a multimodal, interactive project made up of participatory scores with corresponding materials and a built audio environment designed by NU faculty member and sound artist Stephan Moore. This in-process iteration of the participatory performance is the culmination of a 2-week artist residency at Northwestern focused on design. Audiences are invited to join the artists in experimenting with this new installation, an interactive mountain, a body/mass that breathes, shifts, adapts, thunders. I came here to weep examines U.S. territorial possession, Puerto Rican sovereignty, and invites the audience into a collective exorcism. I came here to weep is a part of the Chicago Latin Theater Alliance’s (CLATA) DESTINOS, 7th Chicago International Latino Theater Festival, Sept. 30-Nov. 17. AUDIENCE ADVSORY: The work involves audience participation
Audience Role
Audiences are invited to join the artists in experimenting with this new installation, an interactive mountain, a body/mass that breathes, shifts, adapts, thunders.
Ages: All ages
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Years on EI
About Yanira Castro/a canary torsi
Yanira Castro's work is rooted in communal construction as a rehearsal for radical democracy. She is an interdisciplinary artist born in Borikén (Puerto Rico), living in Lenapehoking (Brooklyn), and working at the intersection of communal practices, performance, installation, and interactive technology. Yanira forms iterative, multimodal projects that center land, and the complexity of citizenship and governance in works activated and performed by the public. Since 2009, she’s created and performed with a team of collaborators as a canary torsi. Their recent work includes a performance manual for reckoning; a participatory podcast to rehearse for a collective future; and a tea ritual created with four teens from NYC Girl Scouts Troop 6000 to enact the ingestion of home/land. Currently, Castro is developing I came here to weep, a collective exorcism for americans to perform. Castro has been commissioned and presented by The Chocolate Factory Theater, New York Live Arts, MCA Chicago, The Invisible Dog Art Center, SPACE Gallery, PICA, LMCC, The Bates Dance Festival and ICA/Boston. Her work has recently been supported by Creative Capital, The MAP Fund, The Alpert Award, a NYFA Choreography Fellowship, Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography, LMCC, MacDowell, Yaddo, Gibney and Marble House Project, and has received two New York Dance & Performance (aka Bessie) Awards for Outstanding Production. Castro is an advocate for arts workers, working to transform funding and nonprofit structures to community-held, horizontal, participatory models of mutual care. She is a founding member of Creating New Futures (CNF), a group of arts workers who gathered at the start of the pandemic to address deep-rooted inequities in the performance field. They co-authored two documents drafted as calls-to-action: “Working Guidelines for Ethics & Equity in Presenting Dance & Performance” and “Notes on Equitable Funding from Arts Workers”.