Performance information

Future Histories of Emancipation  

Day 2: Threshold

The Louisville Industrial School of Reform was founded in 1854 to serve troubled juveniles and set them on the path to becoming good citizens. In 1896, they opened “The Colored Girls Dormitory,” housing its first students, with fifteen Black girls occupying the building. Little to no documentation exists on the period of the dormitory excluding a report in the Courier Journal of eleven girls devising a plan to free themselves from the institution. On July 19th, 1913, six of the girls escaped by tying bedsheets together, forming a rope. They scaled down the side of the building and fled into the night.   

“Future Histories of Emancipation,” a three-day participatory performance series by artist vanessa german, will take place at the University of Louisville’s Gottschalk Hall (formerly the Colored Girls Dormitory), the Belknap Playhouse Theater, and the Speed Art Museum. Taking cues from the compiled research of UofL Professor Felicia Jamison and scholar Saidiya Hartman’s novel “Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments,” each performance will hold the Colored Girls Dormitory as a historical point of departure to explore the radical experiment of imagining what freedom looks like on the other side of capture. Across each day, we will traverse a funeral for freedom, an art studio at the edge of civilization, and interactive imagination rituals.  

Joining vanessa for the performances will be 3-time Grammy nominated violinist, VCR, and local Louisville dancers, Michaiah Peebles and Brittany Johnson. In holding performance as a collaborative ritual, the audience will be asked to contribute poems, live testimony, and mark-making with provided materials as a way to communally pursue new futures.  

Dates, Times, & Location  

Day 1: Friday, October 24th – Colored Girls Dormitory at Gottschalk Hall at 6 pm 

10/24: Register 

Day 2: Saturday, October 25th – Playhouse Theater at 7 pm  

10/25: Register

Day 3: Sunday, October 26th – Speed Art Museum at 3 pm  

10/26: Register