The Commons: Southern Futures

Inspired by the idea of a “commons” as “land or resources belonging to or affecting the whole of a community,” an early goal of the previous Commons Festival was to draw on collective resources to strengthen the performance arts ecosystem within the Triangle as a site of community, discussion, and process. While reviving the notion of the commons as communal resource and collective benefit, this new season advances the idea of commons as procession. Oxford Classical Dictionary defines a procession as “the ritualized escort of someone or something from one place to another by some group before some audience—an ordinary walk transformed” that impacts “both the urban imaginary, creating community, and urban practices, marking spatial significance.” 

Therefore, The Commons: Southern Futures will invite participants to step into and move within currents of grief, joy, and memory through a procession of performances, creative and skills-based workshops, and celebrations occurring across sites of historical and cultural relevance throughout the town of Chapel Hill. The Commons: Southern Futures asks, how can we reimagine our collective creative, cultural, political, and economic resource not as a static, scarce pool of benefits, but as sets of binding relationships to people and to places that move, flow, and flourish? How do we convene, move together and with intention, making possible new and old ways of seeing, hearing, feeling, and being in/with places that deepen our understanding of place and ourselves?

Since its inception, The Commons: Southern Futures has promoted local artists, which have traditionally been selected through an open-call process. The current curatorial vision represents an alternative approach to the idea of openness and engagement than that of previous festivals. The Commons: Southern Futures will carry the spirit of openness forward, while also deepening commitments to local Black artists, businesses, and community under the artist direction of an interdisciplinary cohort of six Black, locally-based artists. This cohort—consisting of Sylvester Allen Jr., Johnny Lee Chapman III, Cortland Gilliam, Anthony “Otto” Nelson Jr., Jasmine Powell, and CJ Suitt—has come together as a part of Culture Mill’s residency in Southern Futures at Carolina Performing Arts. This iteration represents the continued unfolding of Culture Mill’s creative process of reimagining our collective futures through art and storytelling, grounded in a deep and clear-eyed understanding of place and history.

It is our hope that this call to community will bring new audiences, interlocutors, and critical perspectives into participation with the festival than those reached through conventional open call processes. The Commons: Southern Futures, at last, is an open invitation—to move and be moved with us, to witness and listen with us, to write and think with us, to eat and drink with us, to be and become with us.

Within the community, he serves as Co-Chair of the Board of Directors at the Marian Cheek Jackson Center, a nonprofit dedicated to making and preserving local history in Chapel Hill’s and Carrboro’s Black neighborhoods. Relatedly, his creative work aims to explore and illuminate the hues and textures of racialized experiences, identities, and histories. These are the experiences, identities, and histories from which he was born and to which he is accountable—in his being, his writing, and his relations.

Cortland is the current Poet Laureate for the Town of Chapel Hill. Most recently, he has been a writer-in-residence at Culture Mill, participating in collaborative writing alongside and within Culture Mill’s Eclipse. Cultural space-making and space-taking are essential to Cortland’s artistic and political practice and the ways he aims to cultivate community.

He has recently appeared onstage in Greensboro Opera’s Porgy and Bess with Rhiannon Giddens and Burning Coal Theatre Company’s production of The Life of Galileo. Sylvester is a former Culture Mill Artist-in-Residence and is working on a nonfiction book with co-author Belle Boggs.

Otto found dance as a young teenager, falling in love with the freedom of expression that movement allowed. Dancing in earnest from fifteen years on, his career has led him to seek training in various styles. Over time, he’s built his repertoire in Contemporary, Modern, Hip-Hop, and Jazz, and refined his focus in a personal style that blends these traditions. For the past decade, he has performed with renowned choreographers in the Triangle and beyond, gravitating toward emotionally charged work and contemporary pieces with a social conscience, all with the goal of bringing movement to a broad and diverse audience. His belief in the power of dance to change lives and the world has led him to the classroom, where he shares the gift of movement with students of all ages and backgrounds. Otto was a part of Eclipse and served as one of the dancers in the performance.

Continuing on her lifelong journey of exploring the many diverse forms of art and their meaning, Jasmine earned a B.A. in Dance from Oberlin College and an MFA in Dance from Hollins University (a program created in collaboration with the American Dance Festival, Forsythe Company, and Frankfurt University for Music and Performing Arts). Jasmine has performed with the Collage Dance Company, and Dance Diaspora/Essence (Oberlin College). She has also performed and choreographed for the Philadelphia Dance Company. She is currently a local member of COMPANY and KT COLLECTIVE.

In addition to such notable experiences, she’s had the pleasure of training and performing original work by Dianne McIntyre, Ronald K. Brown, Milton Myers, and Culture Mill. These collaborations have enabled her to work with both domestic and international dance creators. Jasmine is currently on the faculty in the Performing Arts Department at Elon University. She choreographed the dance portion of Eclipse with Murielle Elizéon. She performed this portion alongside Anthony “Otto” Nelson Jr.

CJ co-directed, produced, and starred in a historical reenactment of the 1947 Freedom Rides. He’s also performed at various national and local music festivals, including Gnarnia, Shakori Hills, and Bonnaroo, and acted in a production of Hands Up: 6 Playwrights, 6 Testaments. His career as an educator has allowed him to work with young people awaiting trial at the Durham Youth Home, older inmates whose voices have been silenced within the Orange County Correctional Facility, and high school and college-aged men pushing to redefine masculinity in their schools and communities.

Additionally, he has collaborated with organizations such as Transplanting Traditions, Benevolence Farm, and Growing Change on the intersection of storytelling and food justice. He is committed to speaking truth to power and aims to be a bridge for communities who can’t always see themselves in each other.

Chapman also utilizes the mediums of film and photography to convey emotion without explanation under the moniker The Golden Moment. Lee embraces the title of storyteller—the one in charge of relaying information by inspiring the imagination of his audience. Offstage, Lee can be found cleaning the teeth of his community as a Registered Dental Hygienist, traveling with cameras to various places, playing guitar on the porch, or working out on the athletic field with a soccer ball at his feet.