Re-Enactment

On May 13 1985, nearly 500 police officers, fire fighters, and city officials gathered in the Osage neighborhood of West Philadelphia to initiate an armed standoff with a radical, back-to-the-land, black liberation group called MOVE. The Philadelphia Police Department dropped a hand-made bomb on the MOVE house and ordered that the ensuing fire not be extinguished. As a result, 65 neighboring homes burned to the ground and 250 people were left homeless.

ReEnactment (working title) will be a performance ritual in remembrance of the MOVE bombing. A free-to-download .pdf script, the piece is intended to be performed at home, around the dinner table, by families, friends, congregations, and other communities. The script will invite each gathered community to cast individuals as real and imagined characters from history. Reading aloud from the script, the performers will use every-day, found objects to collectively honor this largely forgotten tragedy.