Sean Devare chats with Sugar Vendil in her home studio to discuss artistic origins, collaborative processes, and her unusual path as a classical pianist turned interdisciplinary performance maker. Her upcoming installation and performance piece, "Antonym: scenes of childhood" will debut at JACK with a special activation by her ensemble, isogram. “Antonym: scenes of childhood” is an installation that juxtaposes the past, present, and future. A reminder of the lasting experience of childhood, this new work is an extension of Vendil’s forthcoming performance, Antonym: the opposite of nostalgia. Vendil invites audiences to take part in her childhood world by engaging in nostalgic activities such as slam books, a sticker wall, and writing letters to future or past selves, or loved ones, that the artist will mail for participants. November 15-16th at JACK

Kiará Johnson sits down with JACKLabs resident artist, Camille Simone Thomas to discuss the creative process and inspiration behind her new play "Sweet Blood" premiering at JACK this November after over a year in development with us. This story of sisterhood and resistance carries the heartbeat of her ancestors’ stories and will fill our theater with history, memory, and power. In “Sweet Blood,” three free Black Maroon/Taino women in Jamaica 1727 struggle to thrive in a world that will soon endure hundreds of years of chattel slavery due to the emerging sugar revolution. They must decide what they are willing to do to survive the encroaching British invasion of their land, how far they are willing to go to fight against the disease of colonialism, and what it really means to be a revolutionary.