Rich With History and other stuff you say at a haunted house

Rich With History and other stuff you say at a haunted house extends the Advanced Beginner Group ensemble’s exploration of race and relationship mixed with sly humor, unexpected dances, and plantation tours. Set somewhere between the cargo hold of a spaceship and a craft services table on a film shoot, David and Marcella find themselves onstage again in a cycle that has become more ritual than accident. This time, they are a crew setting up a shot in an imagined film, slowly immersing themselves in a dance of multiple takes. Is it a family dramedy? A real-estate tour? A horror film? Joined by fellow crew members Julie J and Camellia Bayle-Spence, the cast leads us on a tour of haunted spaces, ideas and interactions while never leaving the stage.

Different performers join the “takes,” playing and exchanging multiple roles, allowing additional layers of impact to emerge. As they invent dances to each other’s Spotify histories, David and Marcella continue a decade-long conversation about race in a space that is always shifting, but where the inextricable horror and euphoria of the unacknowledged is always there in its favorite chair, a stowaway in the basement of the spaceship. They grapple with the eerie and destructive repetition of inequality and aggressions, micro- or not … or maybe they just stare at each other in silence, embarrassed to have forgotten their next line. We can laugh at ourselves here, right? Right?