Every Ocean Hughes: Help The Dead Jan 27–28, 2023

Every Ocean Hughes: Help The Dead

Jan 27–28, 2023

A circle of audience members surrounds three performers. One is shrouded in a gold-colored fabric, and another in a pink tie-dyed fabric, with both crouched on the black wooden floor. The third performer, with blue hair and a patterned black-and-white top, stands and looks to their right.
A circle of audience members surrounds three performers. One is shrouded in a gold-colored fabric, and another in a pink tie-dyed fabric, with both crouched on the black wooden floor. The third performer, with blue hair and a patterned black-and-white top, stands and looks to their right.

Every Ocean Hughes, Help the Dead, 2022. Photograph courtesy of Moderna Museet, Stockholm, as part of Every Ocean Hughes, Alive Time, March 1 – April 17, 2022.

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The Susan and John Hess Family Theater is equipped with an induction loop and infrared assistive listening system. Accessible seating is available.

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Floor 3, Theater

Help the Dead, 2019
Live performance; 60 minutes 

January 27, 7 pm
January 28, 4 pm & 7 pm
January 29, 4 pm 

“What is dead?” A simple question becomes a riddle, catalyst, and prompt for imagination in Help the Dead (2019), a combined theater and concert performance by Every Ocean Hughes (b. 1977). Inspired by her death doula training, the artist mimes the workshop format to approach death from a queer perspective. Weaving together song, script, movement, and audience participation, performers Colin Self and Geo Wyex help stage possibilities of mutual aid and self-determination. Help the Dead is at once an inquiry and an imperative. By contending with the politics of dying and living in our time, it renders their calls for social responsibility and communal stakes anew.

Support for Every Ocean Hughes: Alive Side is provided by the Consulate General of Sweden.

Special thanks to local performers Destiny Brundidge, Joy Norton, Aarron Ricks, Amanda Wallace, and Kate Williams.