But she doesn’t care. “Sense is not something you have to make,” McCoy says quoting Pioneer Winter Collective dancer Junior Domingo. “You don’t need one influence to tell a story.”
So many things feed McCoy’s creativity. Growing up in Richmond Heights’ tight-knit Black community “it was Wakanda for me” listening to neighborhood elders, her father’s voice, jazz and funk and blues at home. Singing in the Sweet Home Missionary Baptist Church choir. She brings it all to poems for dance films and Pioneer Winter Collective (as their inaugural poet-in-residence); residencies at the Bakehouse, Locust Projects, and AIRIE Everglades/environmental art organization, earning grants from the Miami Foundation and Oolite Arts.
Her Here & Now piece, I’m So Depressed, “an ambitious poetry driven stage play” is inspired by going through the pandemic as she divorced her ex-husband. “It was tumultuous going through this separation as the world was shutting down,” says McCoy, 36. “It’s taken a minute to understand what I went through.” She was interested in what it means to examine both personal and cultural trauma. Like going through Hurricane Andrew as a young girl, huddling in a closet with her grandmother. “We do not take the time to unpack these atrocities,” she says. Depressed also includes visual mapping, which McCoy did for the first time at AIRIE – more inspirations are Ntozake Shange’s pioneering blend of poetry/story/movement/music, Spike Lee films, the possibility of visually immersing people in her pandemic world.
The title comes from an Abner Jay blues song about divorce. McCoy says the album cover “described it like it was the worst tragedy of his life.” Then she discovered Jay was married 16 times. “That was the resolve I was looking for,” she says. “Sometimes you just keep trying to figure it out.”
To request materials in accessible format and accommodation to attend an event, please contact Eventz Paul at 305.576.4350 or email us, at least five days in advance to initiate your request.
Made with ♥ in Miami by Fulano
We are accessible and assistive listening devices are available. To request materials in accessible format and accommodation to attend an event, please contact Eventz Paul at 305.576.4350 or email us, at least five days in advance to initiate your request.
Eventz Paul is currently the Technical Director and Productions Manager at Miami Light Project. He has been a part of this organization since 2011. He participated in Miami Light Project’s first class of the Technical Fellowship Program held at The Light Box. He joined this program hoping to improve his existing theater skills. He received training from experts in the industry that mentored and further his theater technical skills. Now, he has successfully used his professional knowledge and has had the opportunity to work with various arts organizations and venues throughout Miami including Miami Theater Center, National Young Arts Foundation, the Colony Theatre and many more. He has become an instructor and conducts audiovisual classes to incoming technical fellows.
Beth Boone has been the Artistic & Executive Director of Miami Light Project since 1998, developing critically acclaimed artistic programs that have asserted the organization as one of the leading cultural institutions in South Florida. These programs include: the establishment of Here & Now, South Florida’s most respected commission and presenting program for community-based artists; premiere presentations of internationally acclaimed; pioneering historic international cultural exchange with Cuba; and the creation of The Light Box at Goldman Warehouse, a multi-use performance and visual art space in Miami’s Wynwood Arts District. She previously served as Associate Director of Development for Florida Grand Opera, Deputy Director for the Department of Cultural Affairs at Miami Dade Community College, Wolfson Campus, co-founded an Off Broadway theater company (New York Rep), and served for six years as a Program Associate in the Arts & Culture Program of the AT&T Foundation. She received a B.A. in Fine Arts from the College of Charleston in South Carolina, and a MFA in Theater Arts from Brandeis University in Boston, MA.