Constance Jaquay Strickland
BAC Open Fall 2023 Theater/Interdisciplinary Residency
Photo by Francisco Montenegro
Medea Refracted
A Meditation
A Mental health investigation
A Physical Play on Women’s Mental Health
A Healing experiment using the Black Woman’s body as the primary vehicle.
Please Join Us: BAC Open House Studio Showing, November 17 at 2:30PM
Content Warning: Medea Refracted includes discussions of grief and mature themes.
Artist Bio
Constance Jaquay Strickland is the founder of Theatre Roscius, known for her singular hybrid of experimental film, physical theatre, avant-garde movement, and visual art. A physical researcher/theatre artist, she investigates to see how memories, generational trauma, and isolation live in the body. Strickland’s work digs deep and explores history, fragility, femininity, joy, care, masculinity, and women who go unseen with unflinchingly boldness. She creates brave, disturbing work that is uncompromising, yet gentle, vulnerable and inviting. She merges physical theatre with performance art using the body as the entry point.
Strickland premiered her physical play, This Grief Will Be of Use Parts I + II, along with a prototype physical photography exhibition of An Antebellum Theory, an interdisciplinary work that examines the physical relationship between Black and white women in the face of white patriarchal violence at Art Share L.A. She is currently developing Medea Refracted for a 2024-2025 premiere. Strickland’s new physical short film, And Then They Swallowed Their Pain, centers on the grief of women who have lost a child and premieres Spring 2023.
Creative Team
Constance Jaquay Strickland / Lead Artist
Lydia Jialu Li (they/them) / Performer
Siera Williams (she/her) / Performer
Ambree Feaster (she/her) / Dramaturg
Alison Greene (she/her) / Rehearsal / Studio Assistant
Suvvi (they/them) / Cellist
Jen Anaya (they/them) / Cellist
Due to the support of The Getty Villa Theatre Lab Series and the NEFA NTP Artist Development Award, Medea Refracted has been able to enter the next level of manifestation.
Learn more about BAC Open and view all Fall 2023 Open artists