Performances will take place at The Chocolate Factory Theater, 38-33 24th Street, Long Island City.
For All Your Life is a performance event, film, and social experiment that investigates the value of Black life and Black death; scrutinizing the mechanism of life insurance through the prism of the underwriting process.
Centered around an ambitious seriocomical short film (produced at The Chocolate Factory Theater in Summer 2023, directed by Daniele Sarti), For All Your Life is staged as a performance seminar – with accompanying audiovisual aids – in which Cuyjet offers a primer on the life insurance industry and its direct connection to slavery; unpacking the ways in which human beings grapple with the inevitable prospect of death and, more importantly, the ways in which lives – especially those of people of color – are monetized.
For All Your Life aims to rewrite the performative narrative tradition (in which performance is an act of service for the spectator); inviting the audience to confront its own value systems as they relate to black life and black death while navigating questions of reality, authenticity, accountability, and monetary value.
An accompanying website (forallyourlife.com) will serve as both an online archive of the project and a literal marketplace – extending the life of the project beyond the dates of its physical performance, “for all your life”.
Created and Performed by Leslie Cuyjet. Dramaturgy and Co-Direction by Sean Donovan. Set design by Neal Wilkinson. Lighting Design by Amanda K. Ringger. Film Direction: Daniele Sarti. Co-produced by Jennifer Castro Song and Sweat Variant.
