(Ritual Theater) a 
pratice&praxis 

"The hands of God were upon me and she brought me out by the sweet spirit of her honey and set me in the middle of a valley that was full of bones, dust dry bones. And then she said unto me, prophesy to these bones and say to them, dry bones, hear the word of life and I will make water enter you and you will come to flow into my bosom and  witness all ages of future past and present time. God then began to dance  and with each sway of hip and stomp of foot, there drew a river from the belly of the bottom of the valley and I was gifted a bottle and commanded to soil each dust dry bone  back to life.
                        -excerpt text from film Ancestors Wake

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"We have come, although we never left. Don't get it twisted"Participatory Music Coalition Performance. Chicago IL 2017

 Ritual theatre quite simply is the enactment of a myth or archetypal story with the intention of bringing about healing– usually to resolve an issue, to deal with a difficult life experience, to restore depleted energies or to ease a transition. It's not about perfecting performativty seeking applause or standing ovation, instead its about drawing from  the inner depths of ones sub conscious and bringing  new truths to surface. "Like art, rituals are likely to bear more meanings than words can say. We do not see clear, rational meanings but instead the laying out of ways to act, prompted by felt needs, fears, joys, and aspirations. ...although ritualization is the earliest form of language, we do not well understand ritual unless we realize that within its frame of reference, action is primary and symbolism subordinate.""

"Like the dead-seeming cold bones, I have memories within that came out of the material and ancestry that went to make me.” In other words, there is truth and knowledge to be found in the marrow of our bones, in the quiet recesses of desires and doings who's origin we may not know.. Whose origins may in fact be inherited from ancestors whose desires went unfulfilled and now linger in their descendants. I have come to find that working with the “memories within and the remains of ancestors” becomes essential in expanding the cultural imagination and filling in spaces excised in detail as it relates to personal and collective transformation.  ​” ​"
The performer is shaman or priestess/priest. The performer draws upon the totality of his or her life experience, then amplifies certain colors or aspects or tones which change from moment to moment within the piece. The performers brings forth lost or disconnected parts of themselves and therefore our collective self. Both the performer and the "observer- participants" (audience) are transformed in some way by the performance.​Africans have long believed that ritualized propitiation and invocation of dead kin influences the fate of the living. This is not exclusively an  African practice, but has been brought to its most complex and elaborated systems in the world through  the continent of Africa and its descendants. The relationship between the living and the dead is a manifestation of the continuity of community in a specific familial way. When a society passes concepts, art forms and myths from generations to generation, those ideas are enshrined in the society’s memory and are worthy of emulation. ​

In my Aunties house there are many visions. Crockett TX. 2016

Ritual, if done well, is magic
Ritual theater, if done well, is magical
Ritual, if done well, can help you achieve your goals
Ritual theater, if done well, can remind you of your past and/or provide catharsis for the present
Ritual, if done well, is designed to change your future
Ritual theater, if done well, is designed to change you

I aint in here for my health Ive come to set free. Baton Rouge 2016

archeo-auto-mythologicalization of  the self is possible with any art form and is described  as, “greater than fiction, it is the blending of artifacts, memoirs and guess work to create a detailed and elaborated exploration of self identity in relation to a cultural meta narrative”.