Black Women MADE
HONEY POT PERFORMANCE
Founders: Honey Pot Performance
Seed Phase: 2014-2015 & 2018-2022
Gardeners: Illinois Humanities, Field Foundation
Honey Pot Performance is a Black feminist performance collective with a twenty-year history of exhibition and community-based engagement. HPP’s method involves working with community members to develop multidisciplinary performance works. MADE Lab Director AJ Christian started working with HPP in 2014, documenting the development of Ma(s)king Her, an Afrofuturist dance theater work collectively authored by HPP and a community of primarily Black woman-identified artists. The three-episode docu-series Futurewomen chronicles the development and first performance of the show. Dr. Christian joined HPP’s board in 2018, advising and raising thousands of dollars for the organization. He concluded his tenure in 2022 with the production of Black Feminist Futures, a virtual filmed reading of Ma(s)king Her, directed by Sydney Charles, designed to attract prospective board members, artists and funders as HPP entered a capacity-building phase and expanded their mission to include digital humanities projects, among other initiatives.
HPP and Futurewomen experiments with digital production and distribution to explore futures for Black femmes thriving against the legacy misogynoir and matrix of domination.
FUTUREWOMEN
Season 2 (available on OTV)
Following documentation of the development of Ma(s)king Her, Illinois Humanities and the Field Foundation funded a filmed reading of the final piece, directed by Sydney Charles, produced by Dr. Christian.
Jyreika Guest (Althea) & Adia Alli (Peppa) on set. Photo credit: Jaclyn Rivas
Brianna Buckley as Isis (Photo credit: Jaclyn Rivas)
Alexis Ward (Wonder) (Photo credit: Jaclyn Rivas)
Sydney Charles (Director), Lowell Thomas (Director of Photography) and Mamadou Sewa Bah (Assistant Director/Gaffer/Grip) (Photo credit: Jaclyn Rivas)