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. It is made up of a series of events that interweave, thicken and inform one another, inviting the public to create their own engagement inside the work through multiple forms of witnessing, participating and activating the work. The project is composed of participatory scores for the public to enact, communal meals, dances for mourning, the re-composing and redaction of U.S. treaties as absurdist monologues, and a tea ritual developed with Girl Scouts Troop 6000 centering land/control/freedom/belonging. The environment is held 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 congregating, for manifesting with the public ways of inhabiting the work together.

Created by Yanira Castro in collaboration with Ariel Lembeck (Creative Production); LD DeArmon (Stage Management); Christopher “Unpezverde” Núñez (Access Artistry); Stephan Moore (Sound); Kathy Couch (Light & Environment); Rosana Cabán (Sound Sculpture); Martita Abril, Leslie Cuyjet, and devynn emory (Performance); Girl Scouts Troop 6000; Katie Dean (Graphic Design).

I came here to weep is made possible by 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.