IN THE PROFESSIONAL ARENA

Unremovable Jacket

Written and Choreographed by Cynthia Oliver
Performed by Cynthia Oliver, Karen Graham, and Osunwale Tandum-Lett
Music by Straylight featuring Jason Finkelman, Geoff Gersh, and Charles Cohen

Premiered at Performance Space 122, (NYC) December 11-14, 1998

Unremovable Jacket is a full evening piece that both implicitly and explicitly engages the burdens of race and classification as entities that are assigned and cannot be removed. Considering race as the ultimate fashion accessory, the work endeavors to look at the constructions of race, interpersonal relationships, the challenge of “the dialogue,” misinterpretation and misrepresentation as that which we on different sides of the racial divide do not/cannot know. With words, movement, live music, and a humorous tangle of fabulous fashion, this company melds seemingly separate worlds of the most uncomfortable material into an at once smooth, seamless, shattering, delicious spectacle which addresses the one accessory none of us can escape, that Unremovable Jacket.