Presented as a 360° Virtual Experience using technology by New York-based virtual event production company Musae, audience members will be able to view the production on their phone, tablet, or computer, or may elect to receive a VR headset with their ticket purchase.  Tickets and contribution levels are available at https://www.musae.me/thewilburytheatregroup/experiences/1023/whose-name

Whose Name Was Writ in Water features dual narratives woven together; the interrogation of history through an imagined conversation with the artist’s enslaved 4th great-grandmother and a rite of passage for her teenage son. Water serves as the technology that connects them through time and space. By questioning the past, the artist attempts to navigate the present through ritual, labor, the exploration of landscapes, examination of old family snapshots and documents, original and appropriated poetry, and photography.

“We can’t separate ourselves from the past,” Becci Davis explained in an interview with iolabs, “[The past] infuses our understanding, our behavior, our relationships and our surroundings. Similarly, I look to the future. While finding the stories that were left for me to discover and retell, I often think about what stories are left in my own wake. This ritual of researching, exploring, dreaming, making, sharing is deeply rooting in place because my relationship with place is reciprocal. Place and I simultaneously shape one another. I like to use the metaphor of a river. The riverbed determines the movement of water, while the force of the water gradually shapes the riverbed.

She continues, “As a Black American woman, I am acutely aware of the lack of subjective, non-biased representations of Black culture and family life in the mainstream historic archive. I also understand that the lives and contributions of my ancestors have historically been ignored or erased. This knowledge is a constant source of inspiration. For me revising and annotating the past, infusing historic narratives with a subjective voice and documenting the present are mandatory practices.”