Performance artist Rhodessa Jones will present her one-woman show “Life on the Swerve: Observations from that Place Where the World Weeps” on Tuesday, October 4, at 7:30 p.m. in Scripps College’s Performing Arts Center, Garrison Theater. This event is free and open to the public.
Jones, co-artistic director of Cultural Odyssey in San Francisco, is an actress, teacher, singer, writer, and director of the award-winning Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women, a performance workshop designed to achieve personal and social transformation for incarcerated women. “Art gives life. The theater saved my life, and now, I’m helping to save others,” says Jones.
Jones has received numerous awards and accolades for her work including a GOLDIE Lifetime Achievement Awardfrom the San Francisco Bay Guardian, an Otto Rene Castillo Awardfor political theater, and a San Francisco Foundation Community Leadership Award commending her for developing the Medea Project as “an intersection of art, politics, and social rehabilitation.”
A review in the San Francisco Examiner said, “Jones is frank and feisty in fiery show about ‘the change,'” praising her work in “Hot Flashes, Power Surges, and Private Summers”; and the Chicago Tribune called Jones a “liberating performer.”
The Scripps College Humanities Institute Fall 2011 program is “Performing the Body Politic: Transgressions, Interventions, and Expressive Culture.” The seminar will explore the topic with scholars, performers, and activists in diverse fields through their lecture, film, and performance series. For more information, please contact the Humanities Institute at (909) 621-8237 or visit their website.