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

I came here to weep is a multimodal project that investigates colonial power, self-determination and complex relations of citizenship vis-à-vis Borikén (Puerto Rico). It is composed of a series of scores and events that interweave, thicken and inform one another, inviting the public to create their own engagement through multiple forms of witnessing, participating and activating the work. The project is a set of participatory scores for the public to enact, communal meals, dances for mourning, the collective exorcism of U.S. treaties as absurdist monologues, and a tea ritual developed with Boricua teens from Girl Scouts Troop 6000 centering land/control/freedom/belonging. The environment is supported by access facilitators who guide guests through in-person, virtual, audio, and print versions of the events. I came here to weep is a space for assembling, for raising, dismantling, and reconstructing ways of inhabiting together.

Created by Yanira Castro in collaboration with Ariel Lembeck (Creative Production); LD DeArmon (Stage Management); Stephan Moore (Sound); Kathy Couch (Light & Environment); Martita Abril, and devynn emory (Performance); Girl Scouts Troop 6000; Katie Dean (Graphic Design).

I came here to weep is made possible with support from Creative Capital and a NYSCA Individual Artists’ Interdisciplinary Artist Commission made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature.