IN THE LAB
Camille Thomas is a JACK partnership artist who, while in residence at NACL, will be working on developing the relationship between text, song, and dance/movement in her play, Sweet Blood, that will be produced at JACK in Brooklyn, NY.
Sweet Blood focuses on three free Black Maroon/Taino women in Jamaica 1727 struggling to thrive in a world that will soon endure hundreds of years of chattel slavery due to the emerging sugar revolution. They must decide what they are willing to do to survive the encroaching British invasion of their land, how far they are willing to go to fight against the disease of colonialism, and what it really means to be a revolutionary.
On Friday, November 22nd there will be a full staged reading of the work, incorporating all of the music and dancing that is included in the play.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Camille Simone Thomas is a 5th generation Detroiter through her father’s side and a first generation Jamaican through her mother’s. Her work most often interrogates cultural legacies, familial healing, spirituality + ancestral wisdom, and the general kicking and screaming of how Black femmes get free despite the oppressive forces of colonialism, capitalism, and white supremacy.
Her plays have been workshopped and performed at The Connelly Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, Playwrights Horizons, Sanguine Theatre Company, featured with The Obie Award-winning Harlem9 and Detroit Public Theatre Company, Dixon Place, Workshop Theatre, The Road Theatre Company, Barter Theatre Company, The National Women's Theatre Festival, Lime Arts Theatre Company, American Slavery Project, and Blackboard playwriting series. Her web series “Gro Up” premiered at the Academy Award qualifying Reel Sisters film festival and was also shown at the PanAfrican Film Festival and Martha’s Vineyard virtual film festival.
She was a 2023 New Harmony Project finalist, 2023 Catskills Creative Residency finalist, a 2023 Van Lier New Voices Fellowship Semi-finalist and a 2022 Art House Inkubator Finalist. She’s an associate artist with the Sanguine Theatre company. She’s had fellowships with The Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute’s DEAR fellowship and The Theatre Producers of Color.
JACK PARTNERSHIP
JACK is one of our NYC partner theatres participating in a program that gives artists access to the NACL residency center to develop work that will be subsequently produced at the partner theatre.
JACK is an award-winning multidisciplinary performance-meets-civic space in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. JACK was created to fuel experiments in art and activism, collaborating with artists and neighbors to build a more just and vibrant society. JACK presents over 75 shows a year in theater, dance, and music and hosts conversations on issues that are vital to their local community. JACK’s programming centers on artists of color and those dedicated to our collective liberation.