collaborations
featured collaboration
State of DC Black Theater
Created by Marjuan Canady, Seshat Yon’shea Walker, and Dr. Nina Angela Mercer, the “State of DC Black Theatre" series seeks to amplify the voices, stories, and experiences that shape DC’s Black Theatre community. Over the course of four thought-provoking sessions, we will explore the rich legacy of DC Black Theatre, confront the pressing challenges currently facing our community’s practitioners, while imagining a future where our voices continue to not only be heard but to thrive at the forefront of the arts.
This series is dedicated to fostering honest dialogue, community engagement, and actionable steps toward a more equitable and sustainable theatre landscape.
past collaborations
Invocation
“Invocation for José Antonio Aponte” is a collaboration with film-maker Toshi Sakai for the Visionary Aponte: Art and Black Freedom exhibition from 2017 to 2021. The exhibition has traveled from the Little Haiti Cultural Arts Center to NYU’s King Juan Carlos Center, and onward to the Power Plant Gallery at Duke University, Centro de Desarrollo de las Artes Visuales in La Habana and Galeria Oriente in Santiago de Cuba, and at Vanderbilt University.
“Invocation” also opened the Afrikana Film Festival in 2020.
Crank & Groove
Written and performed by Nina Angela Mercer for Speakeasy DC’s Crank and Groove: Go-Go Love Story at Atlas Performing Arts Center in Washington, DC in September 2013, partially funding by the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities.
In Gratitude: Reclaiming Sites of Trauma
How can we remember, reclaim, and transform sites of historical violence and trauma? Hannah Jacobs revisits a timely conversation with artists Tift Merritt, Nina Angela Mercer, Anna Schuleit Haber, and Deborah Luster on site specific art as a mode of healing …
Urban Bush Women’s HAINT BLU
This collaboration was truly an honor. From 2020 to mid-2023, I was in a rich creative process with Urban Bush Women for Urban Bush Women's HAINT BLU as writer and performer. The work has been developed through residencies at LumberYard, Harvest Works and The Climate Museum at Governor’s Island in NYC, ACC with Junebug Productions in New Orleans, The Historic Hampton House in Miami with Miami Live Arts, MassMOCA with Jacob’s Pillow, and at The Yard in Martha’s Vineyard. HAINT BLU continues to be performed as one of the many dynamic works in UBW’s repertoire.
dramaturgy+
Building A Better Fishtrap
Building a Better Fishtrap is an iterative performance project rooted in the vanishing fishing tradition of choreographer Paloma McGregor's father. What do you take with you? Leave behind? Return to reclaim? Mercer has served as an embedded writer, dramaturg, and performer in Building a Better Fishtrap: from the river’s mouth and Building a Better Fishtrap: A’we deh ya.
125th & FREEdom
125th and Freedom is a durational, processional, public performance that travels down 125th Street from river to river, conceived and directed by Ebony Noelle Golden, produced by National Black Theatre for its world premiere.