Scaffold Room is a “lecture-performance-musical” that refracts ideas of the modern vs. archetypal female performer in American culture. Three performers (Okwui Okpokwasili and April Matthis live, with Edna Carter on video), act out within and play into assumptions about prevailing cultural body-politics. Their sources are drawn from popular culture, speculative fiction and history, including iconic figures such as Beyoncé, Moms Mabley, Amy Winehouse, Kathy Acker, Adele, and Samuel Delaney. Related yet equally unreliable narrators, the women think out loud, tell the truth sometimes, stretch it at others, borrow from each other, and build a myth into a belief system. 

The “scaffold room” itself is a confined, constructed environment; a stand-alone theater separate from its surroundings even as it frames the space it inhabits. The scaffold room contains a podium and microphone; a wall-size video projection screen; a mirrored wall and a bed. Set at a table apart from the room, a DJ performs a score composed by Marina Rosenfeld.

Dramaturgy for this piece included background research; script editing and feedback; discussions of intersections and interactions between multiple elements; performance feedback; creation and assemblage of poster/handout for Walker Art Center premiere; collection of memory-archive for future use.