Constance Jaquay Strickland

On the day of the performance, I was late. The L train stopped running. By bus and then by car in New York City rush hour traffic, I finally made my way to the BAC space. Sweating, panting, and throwing unkind words to myself, I entered the space. Sheepishly, I looked for Constance. I mistook one of the performers for her. After a brief but wonderful conversation, I sat with the buzz of admiration and gratitude for Constance’s performance. I took in the pomegranate and the squash on white linen. I hoped to write you about a linear experience, but I experienced the performance in reverse instead. The buzz, the props, the audience reactions as they left, and finally being able to chat with Constance and meet her in real time. In the flesh. “It starts with the body,” I remembered from our conversation.

Perhaps you will experience the performance on the screen while at home like I did. Constance created a container for grief that I allowed myself to pour into. I did not notice the moving mirrors when I was physically in the space, but at the beginning of the performance, she is in between two mirrors rotated by the other performers, and as they slowly turn through the space, you hear her crying. We sit in this moment, and audience members arrive. I watch them come and wonder what they’re thinking, then tune into the crying. You in the future, how often do you sit with grief and pain? Through the slow and intentional introduction, I witness a woman in despair and grief, but I also nurture my own.

This is a story I know very well. The story of Medea, but have we ever sat with the loss and the pain? We just curse her, but do we try to understand her? This is an important question to ask ourselves, you know. Do we take time to understand the root of pain? While bodies retract and contort, I remember our conversation, and another line from Constance strikes me about making room for mental health. Grief lives on our skin, and we struggle to scratch it off. Contorting our souls to find some peace only to find it somewhere else on our body. Dear Black girl of the future, there is pain in this archive. There is pain in this letter. But there is a way through it.

You in the future, do you turn away from anger? Does it scare you to see an angry woman? Do you fear yourself when you feel anger? She cries, ‘he had no right!” “I lost my boys.”

Invocation! The ancestors, goddesses, and deities. Then there is embrace. The chorus of two women hold Medea and comfort her. How quickly we forget that we need community care. The path forward may not be clear, but we have our ancestors, spirits, goddesses, and communities. May they embrace you fully. May your pain be seen and acknowledged. May your anger be free to scream. May it be held and seen within the full spectrum of your humanity. And then we face ourselves in the mirror. Examine the self in the mirror. Who are we after pain and loss? Who are we?

After the performance is finished, compassion and grace are present. There is forgiveness. . .There is healing coexisting with anger.

Medea Refracted: Observations from the Edges
by Deborah Black

I have been lucky enough to witness Constance Strickland develop Medea Refracted over the past few years. In February 2021 she shared an early work-in-progress as part of an online class I facilitated. Performing artists were struggling more than usual, coping with closed theaters and
rehearsal studios. This workshop was intended to be an antidote, a way to facilitate artists to continue to make their work no matter what.

In that early version, Constance was in her apartment next to a wooden chair that was missing an arm. Even though I saw her perform for the first time on a small screen, the work drew me in and invited a visceral participation, taking my nervous system on a journey with her. As other objects were introduced and repetitions were established, I realized I was witnessing a ritual. From a
small screen in Manhattan peering into Los Angeles, I was in the presence of something transcendent.

As a teaching moment after Constance’s performance, I said something like, “the space between the audience and performer—that transformative space that exists in a theater, is alive and well through our computers.” I asked the class, “Did anyone else experience it?” They did. Another student responded while weeping.

Constance then invited me to witness and support the rehearsal process for Medea Refracted at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in November 2023. She told me she was unhappy working with the script she had written for a previous iteration of the work and wanted to throw it away. She had a strong urge to find her own way inside the work without a theater director. She wanted each
performer to feel great onstage. As I had seen the work in its beginning form, I knew she knew where to go and what to do without a director. I told her to trust herself, and she did.

I am highly influenced by and teach Mary Overlie’s Six Viewpoints, a technique of perceptual practice that encourages each artist to develop their own philosophy. Within this technique is a laboratory Mary called reification¹. This laboratory holds the artist’s struggle to go out into the unknown and try to bring something back to an audience without knowing how. This idea
uproots what many teachers and directors do when they offer you other people’s tools, tricks and tips in order to reify. Mary believed that artists needed to sit within and find their own way through the struggle. I witnessed Constance working in the reification laboratory, grappling in service to her vision. She sat in the deep end of the unknown (it isn’t comfortable) and figured out how to show what she found to the audience.

As a result, Constance’s work speaks volumes in a way that isn’t tangible and isn’t easy to explain. Medea Refracted was not a dance, was not theater, but was the answer to Constance’s questions and followed her urges and her philosophy. What follows are observations from my own experience in watching Medea Refracted.

Lydia Li and Siera Williams hold Constance, who played Medea. They are her ensemble in the studio and onstage. Sophia Bacelar, the cellist, connects these women with a longing sound. They are a community. At first, they hold her between two mirrors on wheels. They spin her, hands spread, pushing tenderly. Constance is held but also trapped. There is a juxtaposition in
this first moment. Trapped, she cries, sobs, wails. She is in grief. She is trapped with her own image, refracted back on herself, multiplying the grief. The mirrors catch the room and catch the reflections of the audience members. We see ourselves as Medea sees herself, in grief. The room
seems to be filled with a shame that hovers. Medea’s grief has duration. It is not a singular event. When we see her she is already in it. She continues within it as if it is all there is. It is held taut like a rubber band for nearly the entire performance. It has waves. It develops, but it doesn’t feel like it will end. Siera sings a deep lament.

The grief is continuing through constant change. The sun is streaming into the studio, reflecting off their white dresses, the mirrors. Constance is breaking out from inside the mirror and Lydia is saying, “This is a story of a woman in grief.” After the juxtaposition of being held and trapped,
this line is doing the opposite. There is no juxtaposition. It is obvious that this is a story about grief after we are watching Constance sobbing for ten minutes. But there is something cutting about this line as it got laid on top of Constance’s actions. It’s almost as if the complete absence of juxtaposition is so unexpected in this moment in the theater, that it cuts like a knife straight to
the heart as truth. This isn’t cerebral, we are heading somewhere real together. The ritual is beginning.

Constance describes her process, her work in the studio as sacred. Each gesture, each action with fabric or instruments is filled with significance for the performers. But it is not something that can just simply be looked at. We as audience are invited directly into the experience when Constance as Medea announced, “You are healers. This is a healing story.” The ritual, although it didn’t require the audience to stand up and join in, works through them. The performers take us through a threshold—both emotional and sensorial. I can feel myself feeling and breathing with them. I can feel my heartbeat and Medea’s dread becomes my dread when Lydia and Siera slap
their feet on the floor. I can feel the children pass as the cloth built into their image falls to pieces. I can feel a mother’s loss.

Refracted—to break, to fracture again and again. I remembered the broken chair in the earlier piece. Now there was/is a sense of fracturing again and again. Now we fracture inside, collectively. Now there is space to heal. I exit the theater with that possibility.

1 Overlie, Mary. Standing in Space: The Six Viewpoints Theory and Practice. 2016.