Kayla Farrish

Put Away the Fire, dear is a live dance-theater work mapping the journey of six BIPOC and marginalized characters taking the reins of their own narrative in an evening-length piece. As a Choreographer and Filmmaker, I apply filmmaking techniques in narrative formation, camera movement, and editing to witness these characters in full humanity. Through Old Hollywood plot frameworks, the live performance plays out along these arc structures as the characters disrupt their oppressive tropes of their designated scripts. Jumping through portals spanning reality and cinema, Put Away the Fire, dear, uproots power and history across generations of the American landscape, to rupture the leading socio-political narratives living in American Cinema of the 1930s-60s. Toni Morrison defines “The Master Narrative” as the lens of a dominant power and our consumption of inherited stories that depicts us all in archetypes of identity. Bursting tropes and filling missing storylines, they endeavor to write new narratives of ranging humanity and power. In a 75-minute performance of moving stories, the six characters traverse scenes and worlds through dance-theater, ranging storytelling, set design, and a score of reclaimed exploited Black American music.

Caretakers of Land/Land Acknowledgement: We acknowledge Indigenous ancestors and communities who sustained this land in Brooklyn, NY, the Munsee Lenape People, and in Raleigh, NC, the Lumbee people. We acknowledge the erasure and survival of Indigenous Peoples and Black Americans. 

Estimated Artist Fee: Performance Fee: $15,000 considering travel, accommodations, and freight (half-week); Week-Long Engagement: $24,000 considering travel, accommodations, and freight