Malcolm-x Betts + Nile Harris
Temporary Boyfriend

January 11-13, 2025

Grainy video still of Malcom-x Betts and Nile Harris. In the foreground, Betts in a blue striped unitard. Behind them, Harris wears a glittery white top and long pink gloves. Both hold microphones to their lips.
Grainy video still of Malcom-x Betts and Nile Harris. In the foreground, Betts in a blue striped unitard. Behind them, Harris wears a glittery white top and long pink gloves. Both hold microphones to their lips.

Performances will take place at The Chocolate Factory Theater, 38-33 24th Street, Long Island City.

Co-presented with Ping Chong and Company and Under The Radar.

For the world premiere of Temporary Boyfriend, artists Malcolm-x Betts and Nile Harris stage the nuanced poetics of their long-term collaboration. Drawing from past performances in each others works including Niggas at Sundown at New York Live Arts and this house is not a home at Abrons Arts Center, Harris and Betts render the friction and intrigue at the pith of their connection in this improvisatory duet. As the pair traverses the barren architecture of The Chocolate Factory, they journey across various touch points of relationality between Black gay men. From the kinship of ancestors lost to the AIDS epidemic, to contemporary manifestations of ephemeral gay brotherhood, Temporary Boyfriend is an intimate portrait of the aesthetics of proximity and estrangement.