Silvia Ann Soares, activist artist
Family Heritage: These folk are part of who I am.
What was my potential destiny given the elements of my inherited legacy, and in what forms would I pass it along? I am Black Cape Verdean, an ethnicity created by the Portuguese Slave Trade. The gradual 'Manumission' in Cabo Verde occurred during 1856-1876, only 85-65 years before my birth in 1941 in Cranston, RI. Considering these facts and my DNA data, my great-grandparents were born of the enslaved and possibly of enslavers. In quiet rebellion and with hope, all my grandparents immigrated to the United States. My musician maternal grandfather labored on a Cape Cod farm and my maternal grandmother in a New Bedford textile mill. Residing in Providence, my paternal grandmother Izora Graça (Soares) worked at the Outlet Department Store and played piano and sang at Sheldon Street Church, on 51 Sheldon Street, founded by retired whaler Manuel Ricardo Martin and supported by Central Congregational Church under the name The Portuguese Mission. There, Izora's uncle, Jose Andrade aka Joseph Andrews became the Mission's first deacon of color and first President of its Cape Verdean Brotherhood, the first Cape Verdean beneficent society in Rhode Island. My paternal grandfather Sebastian Jose Soares had a band that played local dances and weekly on the Outlet WJAR station. He made seven violins and one mandolin all which he gave away. He was the first Secretary of the Cape Verdean Brotherhood at the Portuguese Mission. My father Arthur Sebastian Soares gave up the trumpet in the early 40s. Then, during the 20 years between 1954 and 1974, he served sixteen as President of Local #1329 of the International Longshoremen's Union. During his tenure, he became the first longshoreman, Union official, and Black man to serve the stipulated year as President of the Propeller Club of the United States Port of Narragansett Bay Pilot Commission ('73-'74.) He was the first Black to hold these offices concurrently, locally, and likely in the nation. In 1974, the Propeller Club of Narragansett Bay cited him for distinctive service and in 1987 named him Maritime Man of the Year. My paternal uncle Eddie Soares, the long-time pianist with the locally renowned Jewels of Dixie worked daily in Arthur Palmer's sporting goods store located at the mouth of the Thayer Street Tunnel. In East Wareham, MA, my mother, Dorothy Maria Rodrigues (Soares,) was pulled from junior high by her stepmother to do the domestic chores and later worked for years as a domestic in Providence. In 1973 Dorothy made the Dean's List at Roger Williams College going on to earn an Associate in Arts in 1973 and their BA in 1975 at 59 years of age. She went on to become a Teacher's Aide at Central High and loved working in the multi-cultural environment. My brother Arthur J. Soares, Emerson '78, worked in radio. A known radio announcer, he did celebrity appearances at local events and commercial spots on Citadel stations, WWLI-FM, WPRO-AM/FM, WWKX-FM, WPRV-AM and WEAN-FM WLKW. He garnered a wide audience as "Art Spencer" on LITE105. He also hosted the 1990 WWAZ Classical Cruise Tour of major ports of Western Europe.
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Arthur S. Soares, President ILA #1329 1954-1974 d. 1988
Dorothy Maria Rodrigues (Soares) 1941
Dorothy M. Soares, Central High School
Dorothy M. Soares, garden prayer d.2002
These folk are part of who I am, but I branched out differently. My youthful desire to teach and my activist nature were eventually realized through my theatrical ventures: acting, writing, and directing.
My Work: Activism Through Theatre
Describing my art is of less importance than how it inspired, informed, and facilitated my evolution into activism through theatre. At 83 years old, I remain in the acting unions Actors Equity and SAG-AFTRA, having performed overseas, in major regional theatres, national tours, and in '70s television series. My ensuing work is fueled by concern for humanity, justice, truth in education, peace, and a healthy planet. As a Theosophist, I embrace its motto: "There is no religion higher than the truth." All life is sacred.
In 2026, for the 250
th anniversary of the United States, the semi-quincentennial, I will perform solo and in collaboration with Black and Indigenous artists and educators to present the historical struggles of Rhode Island’s BIPOC and their enduring economic and artistic legacy in the United States.
From 1946-49, K-3
rd grade, I lived alone with my mother Dorothy at 17 Lippitt Street a few houses off North Main in what is now referred to as 'Lippitt Hill.' The neighborhood residents were low-income descendants of Rhode Island enslaved Africans and Black Southern migrants, Cape Verdean, Irish, Jewish and Polish immigrants and families, with both original Narragansett and migrant Indigenous. Then and now my exact location was/is in the Homeland of the Narragansett Nation. Before the late 50s-60s razing of the neighborhood to create University Heights Shopping Plaza and surrounding projects, our tenement house was situated over what is now the driveway of the present-day Plaza coffee shop. During this urban renewal, my Doyle Avenue Elementary was replaced by the East Side Apartments. The 16 Carrington Avenue tenement where I lived with my mother, my birth father and brother, was replaced by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School. My parents secured our present family home while I embarked on a path driven by my passion for theatre.
My first connection with my mission of
activism through theatre began at nine years old at Christmastime, 1950, in the first semester of my four years of boarding at Woonsocket’s Couvent de Jesus Marie and enrolled in Ste. Claire’s School. Attending the Christmas show, my mother was shocked to see her 4
th-grade daughter, Silvia Ann, playing for the first time, the xylophone, the glockenspiel, the marimba, and the piano. Dressed in red plaid pants, a peacoat, and a black tam, I delivered a monologue in my newly learned French portraying a little boy from Africa coming to see the baby Jesus. Years later, on a 1973 National Tour with the Negro Ensemble Company’s
The River Niger, I was again costumed in red plaid pants, a peacoat and a black tam.
Theatrical roles at Lincoln University in Jefferson City MO ('59 -'61) opened my eyes to world issues. In
Anastasia, set after the 1917 Russian revolution, I portrayed the exiled Romanov grandmother 'Dowager Empress.' In Jean Anouilh's
Antigone, I played 'Antigone' rebelling against limiting tradition and the dictator. I portrayed the Norwegian 'Hedda Gabler' who rebelled against the oppressive constrictions of women in the 17
th century. In Sean O'Casey's
The Shadow of a Gunman set in the Irish War of Independence, I played the lead 'Minnie Powell.'
I returned to Providence in 1962 and until 1965, I worked as a Proofreader for the American Mathematical Society. I read aloud, in proofreading lingo, drafts of mathematical periodicals and other publications, from titles to references. Some were to be transliterated from Russian, Chinese or German. No need to know the languages, however, only their symbols and format. Still, eventual familiarity with repeated phrases and terminology was inevitable and helpful. Mentally noting translations of English words was fun. During this time, I joined the Scitamards, the first Black local theatre group in Rhode Island, understudying and then playing the activist ‘Beneatha’ in
A Raisin in the Sun. The Barrington Players cast me as 'Addie' the maid in "The Little Foxes." 'Addie' is designed as the moral contrast to the 1900 Southern White families' corruption, greed, and injustice, and is an illuminating influence on the play's teen White character and for the audience. At 21, I totally understood the playwright's intent despite the director never discussing anything with me, other than to enter, follow the blocking and do my lines. What had he decided about my ability to comprehend a script or social issues? I buried my thoughts, yet I was indeed aware of serving up a significant message.
I joined the Broad Street Trinity United Methodist Church theatre company. In a stage adaptation of
The Andersonville Trials, I played a Scottish socialite and also 'Mary Magdalene' in Kahlil Gibran's
Jesus, The Son of Man. One night after a show, Barbara Orson, Milton Stanzler, and Norman Tilles invited me to join their new theatre company soon set to open. So, when it opened, I joined Trinity Repertory in 1963 doing props, and scenery and played several roles all under our beloved Adrian Hall's direction.
However, in 1963, Adrian, famous for non-traditional casting, was out of town. Another man directed the 1936
House of Bernarda Alba by Federico García Lorca who was assassinated in 1936 in Spain for being gay. Lorca wrote this all-woman piece dealing with sexual repression and the oppressive societal expectations of women. I appreciated Lorca’s outcry against injustice and the casting In Trinity’s 1963 version introduced me to the limitations of my skin color. My brown face did not fit with the hue of elite Spanish women and despite my acting skills, I was relegated to play the most menial of the servants 'La Criada' with one line. Later, under Adrian’s direction, I encountered another of my innate concerns, the clash between the secular and the spiritual. I portrayed the ‘Dark Witch’ in the fictional play
Dark of the Moon. Similarly, portraying 'Tituba' for my first time, in Trinity's 1965 production of
The Crucible, Trinity’s dramaturgy revealed religious intolerance, greed, and abuse of political stature.
The Crucible introduced me to the Second Red Scare (1947–1957) in the United States.
In the summer of 1965, I observed former Nazi Germany while on a US State Dept Tour of Service Clubs entertaining Service Men throughout Germany. I noticed how well-kept it was in hard won peace time, people daily scrubbing down their front steps. Yet, the authoritarian rule of East Germany came into full view when we traveled by train to Berlin. Crossing through East Germany, the train to Berlin was boarded hourly by armed soldiers from the United States, East Germany, and West Germany. Just before arriving in Berlin, the early grey morning hours revealed East German soldiers posted in the woods. One day on an excursion, we passed through Check Point Charlie to enter East Berlin. It was deeply disheartening to witness sallow sober East Berliners standing motionless, staring with dead eyes above the Berlin wall at a "Zentralbild", West Berlin’s electronic display of news updates and information, that was intentionally facing East Berlin.
The Germany tour was organized by Gerald Slavet, later Co-Founder of PBS
From the Top. Returning stateside to Washington, DC, Michael (Procaccino) Cristofer, two other actors and I debuted in Slavet's new company, Garrick Players, at Grace Episcopal Church in Georgetown.
1966 with Michael Cristofer, Garrick Players DC
The Germany tour was organized by Gerald Slavet, later Co-Founder of PBS From the Top. Returning stateside to Washington, DC, Michael (Procaccino) Cristofer, two other actors and I debuted in Slavet’s new company, Garrick Players, at Grace Episcopal Church in Georgetown.
We created a coffee house in the basement, did morning school shows, afternoon rehearsals and evening performances, at tined including community or students from Catholic University (CU) grad school. The next season, CU grad Michael moved on, eventually to fame, and was replaced by CU grad Chris Sarandon whose fellow grad student wife Susan Sarandon joined us onstage for one show. After Garrick closed in 1968, I joined Adrian Hall in Trinity Repertory's '69 production House of Breath/Black and White in which the lead male was simultaneously played by a White and a Black actor. I would revisit Trinity in 1984 in Jonestown Express, a play decrying the mass suicide of Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple in Guyana.
1984 Jonestown Express Trinity Repertory
In 1970, I moved to New York with the Sarandons and our dear friend Charles Lynch (CU grad) who would join the cast of Hair. In New York, I engaged in the Black Theatre Movement Off-Broadway, joining A Black Quartet produced by Woodie King, Jr. in which I created the lead role 'The Madam' in Ed Bullin's The Gentleman Caller.
1969 ‘The Madam' A Black Quartet, Off Broadway
1970 A Black Quartet
1973 ‘Ruth’ A Raisin in the Sun, Harold Scott Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park
I replaced an actor in Imamu Baraka’s Slave Ship. I was featured in nine of the ten plays in the Negro Ensemble Company’s annual 2-week Works in Progress program including Sonia Sanchez’s one-woman piece Sister Son/ji. Following a 1971 stint at Ford’s Theatre in DC, I joined the national tour of Charles Gordone’s multi-Obie awarded winner and first Black Pulitzer Prize Play No Place to Be Somebody. Back in New York, Joseph Papp’s Public Theatre cast me in Black Terror by Richard Wesley who went on to write screenplays for Sidney Poitier. My regional theatre performances included those at The Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Cleveland Play House, and McCarter at Princeton.
In 1973, touring the Negro Ensemble Company’s Tony Award-Winning Broadway play The River Niger, I played 'Gail', the only girl in the revolutionary gang. It opened at the Huntington Hartford Theater in Hollywood across from the famous Brown Derby restaurant. At the opening night party, a beautiful blue-eyed woman sweetly complimented my performance. It was Esther Williams! Numerous Black luminaries also congratulated me.
I remained in Los Angeles and won Guest Principal speaking roles in several television series playing in scenes with the series’ stars: Kojak, Good Times, Delancey Street, Sara, Doctor’s Hospital, Nancy Walker Show, Baretta, Delvecchio, Police Story, and The Rookies.
1974 'Jackie' Kojak (see video clip below)
1976 Los Angeles
Click on this video icon to see the Kojak video clip
Theatre in LA included a show at the Mark Taper Forum featuring Lou Gossett, Jr., Cleavon Little, native Rhode Islander James Woods, and dancer Paula Kelly who I understudied. Later, my friend, another gifted working Rhode Island actor Walter McGuinn, garnered me a role in the pilot Delancey Street playing Gossett's girlfriend. The LA Shakespeare Festival featured me as 'Lady Capulet' in Romeo and Juliet.
1975 'Lady Capulet' Los Angeles Shakespeare Festival
1977 Los Angeles
I enjoyed several roles in Lonnie Chapman’s Group Repertory Theatre (GRT,) whose Board included Dennis Weaver. Most of their members were working industry people. At GRT, I was astounded by the 18-year-old Sean Penn when working in scenes with him. For one of GRT’s showcase nights, I adapted Paddy Chayefsky’s 1953 TV play Marty about an Italian family, to a stage play about African Americans set in the 50s of Black America. A few days after the well-received showcase there were thirteen plays in my inbox requesting me to direct, but in a few months I was headed back home. This was due to my unmentored compassion in trying to help a person, in which situation my left cheek was opened by the taunting touch of a machete. Having no resources for plastic surgery I headed home.
Having experienced the wonders and rich cultural activity of major cities, I was disheartened to return to Providence in 1981 recalling its minimal public activity before I left. Little did I know that its cultural activity would blossom and that in Providence I would realize a significant part of my mission of activism through theatre. In 1984 while performing in Jonestown Express at Trinity Rep, I was hired to play 'Tituba', for my second time, in Three Sovereigns for Sarah. It aired on PBS American Playhouse in 1985 and is now streaming on media platforms. This script researched the Salem Witch Trials for the first time and reveals the truth of the corrupt politics, greed and wrenching tragedy of executing innocent people for revenge and to procure their land.
'Tituba' 1985 Three Sovereigns for Sarah PBS
Over time, my theatrical engagement would resonate with my deep concern for humanity and my respect for spirituality, the unseen nature of life. From the late ‘60s New York onward, I explored the philosophy of Eastern mystics, astrology, parapsychology, and metaphysics. In Los Angeles, I joined the Theosophical Society, attending classes, films, and talks, and spending a month at Far Horizons summer camp in Giant Sequoia National Monument. Wow! those glorious giants. Meditating one morning in the Far Horizons hillside amphitheater, I tried for a while to ignore a strange whirring sound. Finally, I gradually lifted my eyelids and saw a hummingbird touch, touch, touching my lip. I gasped. It hovered a moment longer and flew away. Kissed by a hummingbird! In Los Angeles, I attended talks and programs by Dr. Stephan Hoeller at the Gnostic Society where he presided as Bishop. In his early 20s in Hungary, he witnessed the Russian takeover of his family estate, the killing of his parents and the burning of his family’s extensive library of ancient and other texts. I also attended Sunday morning lectures by Manly P. Hall Founder of the Philosophical Research Society. I visited Buddhist temples, Sikh gatherings, fire ceremonies, and films of Sai Baba at the humanitarian Sathya Sai Baba Center and more. One of my groups held a weekly healing circle group focused meditating for healing of specific individuals. In the circle was an allopathic physician and nurse. Their participation was unknown to their colleagues at their hospital. Their meditation was revealed only to a young female patient at the hospital and her family. After a month, the medical pair’s uninformed colleagues were amazed at the girl’s unexpected rapid recovery. Iat this time, worked in a health food store and after a few months of Hatha Yoga with a renowned instructor, I was standing on my head and running twelve miles a day. But then ...
Back in parochial Providence in 1981, I sorely missed the magnificent cultural events, institutions and spiritual centers of Los Angeles but began to find meaningful engagement. I performed poetry, mine and more, and joined the RI Feminist Theatre portraying a lesbian in a conflicted partnership. I joined Mobilization for Survival, demonstrating against war and nuclear proliferation, homelessness, and injustice.
1980s with Guatemalan refugee, July 4, protest, RI State House
1988 with Suzanne Schmidt, Jim Tull
1987 Buddhist Walk for Peace
In 1987, I walked with Buddhist Monks of Nipponzan Myohoji of the Peace Pagoda at Leverett, MA, from Providence Friends Meeting to St. Francis Church Wakefield where I performed my program
Sacred Messages: African American, Native American, and Original Poetry. In 1988, I quit my apartment to live for two years in the Volunteer Residence of Amos House, working at the Women's Shelter and cafeteria meals. In 1989, I joined the Providence-Niquinohomo Sister City Project Brigadistas in Nicaragua, sleeping on a villager’s floor and walking about four miles daily to and from the countryside to build two cinder block school rooms.
In 1990, the RI Rape Crisis Center mounted "Healing Pieces: Artwork by Survivors of Sexual Abuse." I volunteered to perform the poetry of those not ready to share publicly. During the exhibit’s initial planning circle, some participants chose to identify their experience of sexual assaults. As they went around the circle, my head began to pound. The pressure built and my head felt as if it would explode. I found myself confronting my own unaddressed wounds from rape at thirteen years of age by a group of boys that occurred only blocks from the location of that art exhibit gathering. I decided to speak to the exhibit's therapist. When I did, my head relaxed and in 1993 at Brown University I penned a long poem of healing titled
Learning to Laugh Again. I have read it for groups and to the 2014 Brown
Imagine Rape 0'Rally on the Main Green.
1992 Benefit Concert for Leonard Peltier Brown University
Moving along, I became the researcher, designer, director and performer of solo performances. In 1990, I joined RIDivest advocating divestment from South Africa. I gave solo readings of
Mayibuye iAfrica/Black South African Poetry, Song, and Slides with some images generously loaned by Phil and Anne Grant from their ministry in South Africa. Another of my shows was called
Native Americans, African Americans, and American Quakers: A Quincentennial Celebration of Love - Stories, Poems, and Songs. It was presented at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Wickford and at the 1992 New England Yearly Meeting of The Society of Friends at Hampshire College. A benefit concert at Brown for Leonard Peltier featured my poems. I performed South African poetry at Pond Street Baptist Church Community Service of "Celebration and Thanksgiving on The Release of Nelson Mandela." Selections of my South African poetry were delivered at First Baptist Church in America, for RIDivest and Brown University Rally and Dance Against Apartheid where I met Randall Robinson, a civil rights advocate and opponent of Apartheid.
While enrolled at Community College of Rhode Island ('91-'93,) I organized and scripted three Kwanzaa Celebrations with storytellers, entertainers, and community leaders. Alongside, I organized an exhibit of elementary school students' Kwanzaa art, which I gathered from schools and returned after mounting the exhibit in the Atrium of CCRI's Providence Campus. An African drum procession opened the initial event. I entreated Almacs and they donated so much refreshment that the guests had take-homes!
From 1993-95, while managing my mother's early Alzheimer's, I earned an AB in Theatre from Brown University at 54 years of age. There, I was awarded the Howard R. Swearer Award for Public Service. In 2018, Brown University’s Department of Africana Studies and its Rites and Reason Theatre awarded me the Rhett S. Jones Legacy Award for Outstanding Contributions to Institution Building in the Area of Performance, and The Alumnx Legacy Award for the same. Brown's 1993 Summer Theatre was fun. After graduating from Brown, the graduate program at Chicago's 'The Theatre School' was rife with racism so I quit after the first semester. However, in Chi-town, I went on to outside classes with a Goodman Theatre director and additional ones at the Victory Gardens Theater. I performed with a skilled Shakespeare Staged Reading Group. They happened to be all White members at that time and recalled their own disappointments with The Theatre School.
Memorable Chicago experiences included being undisturbed for half an hour in the 1995 Monet exhibit "Claude Monet: 1840-1926" at the Art Institute of Chicago. My peak experience in Chicago and perhaps thus far was as a volunteer for the 1996 conference of the Society of Buddhist-Christian Studies. I sat on the front row of a small, invited gathering for a talk by the 14
th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, and Zen nun Sister Elaine McInnes. Following the discussion, filled with gales of laughter, His Holiness exchanged one-on-one greetings with us guests and took photos with us. During that time, I visited America's Black Holocaust Museum in Milwaukee and spent a long day alone with Dr. James Cameron, Museum Founder and Lynching Survivor. In an infamous photo of a lynching on Aug 7, 1930, in Marion, IN, the empty rope hanging beside two lynched Black men was meant for the young James Cameron.
In 1997 I left Chicago and returned home to care for my mother who had Alzheimer's. I had experience in this work. My first job was at eighteen as an Attendant at the RI Mental Hospital, in Cranston. Later through the '80’s, I worked as a Nurse's Aide and in professional home health care. My mother passed away in 2002. Today, my writing and research desk sits where stood the headboard of my mother Dorothy's bed.
Following her passing, I began a rewarding theatrical activist journey with Rites and Reason Theatre under Artistic director Elmo-Terry Morgan. The roles reflected my concern for humanity and spirituality. Among the range of roles played were the 'Mother of Antiquity'; the 'Profile Tree' that welcomed and housed the diverse neighborhood birds; the 'Echo' of wisdom in the valley, and a progressive 17-century freed Black woman who, while working as a domestic, was self-educating. I also played 'John Quincy Adams' advocating for the Amistad; 'John Lomax', an American musicologist and folklorist, and several roles in the LGBTQ Annual Black Lavender Weekend instituted by Terry-Morgan, and more.
1999 'Mother of Antiquity' Heart to Heart, Rites and Reason Theatre Brown University
2013 'Miss Only' Ophelia's Cotillion, Rites and Reason Theatre Brown University
2015 'John Quincy Adams' Rites and Reason Theatre Brown University
Still a proud Union gal, I enjoy community engagement. These include a solo as Zora Neale Hurston with Culture Park of New Bedford and their plays and annual showcases at New Bedford's Whaling Museum, presentations at New Bedford's Working Waterfront Festival, New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center and more. Locally, there have been poetry readings and plays with RI Feminist Theatre, Perishable, AS220, Cape Verdean Progressive Center, Cape Verdean Museum, RI Black Storytellers, Providence Black Repertory, Mixed Magic Theatre, Wilbury, WaterFire, Langston Hughes Community Readings, Stages of Freedom, RISD Museum, libraries and more. My Boston gigs include a Huntington Theatre Outreach Stages piece playing an African American and an Hispanic; the Group Repertory, and Nora Theatre Company playing 'Teresias' in
Antigone.
2010 Port of Providence 2010 ILA #1329 James DiPina, SAS, Marshall Bento Jr., Peter Roderick. Photo by ProJo
In 2008, I began my researched/illustrated talks in Providence, in RI and in Massachusetts. They included "By the Sweat of Our Brow" an oral history project on the Local #1329 ILA, International Longshoreman's Association; "Kerosene Lamp Church" (2014-19) about the history of Sheldon Street Church; and "Eddie Soares: RI Ambassador of Jazz" (2015-16) about my uncle Eddie Soares, pianist of Tony Tomasso's Jewels of Dixie. In 2004, a consortium of Rhode Island historical societies funded me to direct and perform my play
Plantations Complex: A Harvesting of Souls in staged readings including at Newport Colony House. In 2013, I wrote and directed a piece for Brown Prof Erik Ehn's
Anniversary Memorial of The Station Nightclub Fire at the First Baptist Church of America. It was also fun to procure and present musical bands in Billy Taylor Park on Camp Street, funded by Providence Art, Culture and Tourism Neighborhood Performing Arts Initiative. Brown University's Ruth Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice program
Reimagining New England Histories will publish my bilingual historical play about the founder of Sheldon Street Church, Manuel Ricardo Martin, titled
Kurador di Álmas Healer of Souls. Fellow members of the Providence Snowtown Project shared insight on my researched play about the early Providence neighborhood, Snowtown. It will be initially presented in staged readings.
2016 'Silvy Tory' with Brister Rhodes , Wilbury Fringe
2018 'Silvy Tory' photo by Krzysztof Mathews
My present solo characters include 'Silvy Tory', an enslaved RI woman, documented as Silvia Torrey, who I enact in my Silvy Tory Stories to teach early history in Rhode Island.
2023 Silvia, 2023, Newport Museum of Art [painting by Bob Dilworth]
The description card reads: "... Dilworth included these male figures to bring attention to social issues and acknowledge Black Lives Matter protests. In this composition, Silvia and Silvie Tory become ancestral figures behind these two young men offering "blessings to the young people." Another of my characters is named after my maternal grandmother 'Sylvaña'. 'Nha Silbanha', is a bi-lingual Cape Verdean elder who tells the history of Cabo Verde and the diaspora.
In 2013, the RI Council on the Humanities (RI Humanities) funded me to research and become 'Nancy Elizabeth Prophet in Living History'. My first event was presented by the RI Black Heritage Society, in a three-day program and exhibit staged by Robb Dimmick and Ray Rickman,
The Art and Life of Nancy Elizabeth Prophet: Black Sculptress, Calm Assurance and Savage Pleasure.
2014 'Nancy Elizabeth Prophet' RISD Museum (see video clip below)
Following my initial 2014 dramatic reading of Prophet's Paris diary at RI School of Design Museum's Metcalf Auditorium was another at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 2015. To date, I have presented Prophet twenty-four times, given seven dramatic readings of her diary and performed thirteen versions of solos in my
Defiance! series, which include diary excerpts, letters, and biographical material depicting Prophet's life. In 2018, I initiated and was the Curator of a RISD Round Table discussion on Prophet.
Click on this video icon to see the 'Nancy Elizabeth Prophet' video clip
'Nancy Elizabeth Prophet' RISD Museum exhibit, photos by Erin X. Smithers
On July 25, 2024, I enacted Prophet in my new solo Defiance! Art and Life at RISD's Metcalf in conjunction with RISD Museum’s comprehensive exhibit, the first such one on Prophet, Nancy Elizabeth Prophet: I Will Not Bend an Inch. I re-visited my primary sources and files to re-examine Prophet's life. In this version, a wiser impassioned Prophet, months before her passing, recalls the struggles and successes of her career. She defiantly drove herself to sculpt despite her fiscal and physical challenges. My script for this portrayal of Prophet was informed by her friendship with W.E.B. DuBois, her teaching at Spelman College, being racial misrepresented, incidents of racism, her poetry, essay, and her expounding of her philosophy in her article Art and Life. My past local presentations include Trinity Repertory Company's YASI, Newport Art Museum, Wilbury Theatre, PVDFringe, RI Black Storytellers, AS220, RI Historical Society, Community Libraries, East Providence City Hall.
2017 'Nancy Elizabeth Prophet' Defiance! AS220
Trinity Rep First Night
2017 'Nancy Elizabeth Prophet' RIHS Smithsonian Day John Brown House Opening of NMAAHC
2018 Visible Cloth, Invisible Bodies, talk for URI at Center for Reconciliation, photo by Krzysztof Mathews
In 2019 I joined the Providence Village of The Village Common of RI where I enjoy meeting interesting new folk and making volunteer phone calls.
All in all, there was more in my journey, and more to come! To quote Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, "I stop only when I drop."