The festival also commissioned Deavere Smith to create the documentary play “The Basil Biggs Project,” based on her own ancestor who was hired to bury Union soldiers killed at the Battle of Gettysburg during the Civil War.
Through the festival, composers and singers Lauren Talese and Zeek Burse are in residence at the Museum of the American Revolution to create original music inspired by the collection and display of the nation’s origin story.
Trapeta Mason, who was selected as Philadelphia’s fifth poet laureate in 2019, will create a two-part poetic interpretation and immersive experience about Dinah, a Black enslaved woman who helped rescue the historic Stenton House in the Logan neighborhood from being burned down by British soldiers in 1777.
Although few facts are known about the life of Dinah, recently a memorial to her was erected at Stenton.
“I asked the question: ‘What would compel an African American woman in that era to save a home?’” Mason said. “The story I found is really narrow, so in this project Dinah is expanded. Dinah is multidimensional. She’s human.”
ArtPhilly is arriving amid an onslaught of major events touching down in Philadelphia, including the FIFA World Cup, the PGA Championship and a flood of historical tourism. Kathryn Ott Lovell, president and CEO of the Philadelphia Visitor Center Corp., praised the festival for encouraging artists to take a critical look at the state of American democracy.
“We stand collectively on a precipice, a political precipice, a precipice of technology, of war and, God willing, of change,” she said. “When we find ourselves on a precipice, we must ask the inevitable question: What now? This is the absolute right moment for ArtPhilly to pose this question, because the world will be watching.”
The festival will feature plenty of events that are not laser focused on the promises and disappointments of American democracy. Ballet X will perform a newly commissioned choreography for Antonio Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons,” filmmaker Glenn Holsten will present a “city symphony” film about Philadelphia shot by a small army of amateur citizen filmmakers and DJ and producer King Britt will present “Blacktronika,” a weeklong festival of performances and workshops about Afrofuturism in electronic music.
Adair described the roster of festival artists as exploring our current moment in America “with provocation and anger” as well as “delight and tenderness.”
“They offer work that asks us to look harder, feel more fully, when sometimes we don’t want to feel,” he said. “Together, we offer you this festival as an invitation, not an escape, but an encounter.”