Performance Art

This is the full list of our 2021 SJAF Performance Art

Artists are listed in alphabetical order by first name.

Please note: SJAF student artists' work is best viewed via desktop computer.

Content warning: SJAF provides an open space for the critical and civil exchange of ideas. Some content in the festival will include topics that may be disturbing or harmful to some viewers. We provide this warning and ask all of our festival artists and attendees help us create an atmosphere of mutual respect and sensitivity.

*denotes sensitive content

Ode to Queers (VIDEO)

Isabella Fatseas

Poetry

My poem "Ode to Queers" is a piece I wrote in honor of the LGBT+ community. It's a piece meant to bring validation to the struggles of being queer, but it is also a recognition of strength and hope. The inequalities faced by LGBT+ individuals are overwhelming. Not conforming to societal expectations of love, gender, and expression has lead to the oppression of the community for years. This poem is meant to acknowledge these scars and achievements and to encourage us to continue to fight.

Ode to Queers Poem.pdf

Ode to Queers

(text)

To enlarge image, click on the image or (right click and select Open Link in New Tab or Open Link in New Window)

What's Going On Today

Isabella Kercorian

Music

Marvin Gaye wrote "What's Going On" as a call to change during the Civil Rights Movement. This charge resonates deeply in our cores today, as our country collectively reckons with police brutality and systemic inequality. We all must find our own "way, to bring some lovin' here today." I created "What's Going On Today" to highlight some ways in which Detroiters use their arts, skills, businesses, and voices in concert to lift up our vibrant and unified Detroit community.

The Columbine Generation*

Lilly Niehaus

Theatre

My piece's purpose is to bring awareness to the constant fear today's students face and is a call for sensible gun laws/gun control reforms. Growing up post Columbine has created a generation that is ready and willing to fight for change. Sadly, gun violence and mass shootings disproportionally effect young people and those from lower socioeconomic areas. The ability to go to school, or anywhere, feeling safe is a basic human right and sensible gun laws must be put in place so as to ensure this

Rain Garden

Joel Berends

Poetry

The poet (at)tends a garden, neighborhood, and issues of and within social justice through ecopoetics--centering whiteness and its colonizing effects on human and non-human subjects.

Delight

Sequoia Snyder