HCL Premiere | THRIVAL

THRIVAL A sonic and performance-based work rooted in themes of transformation Doors at 6:00 Performance at 7:00 8:00: Decompress, expand , thrive! This performance-based work is rooted in themes of transformation, resilience, and renewal. The work deconstructs the sounds of survival—laughs, cries, sighs, whoops, screams, long notes, harmonies, and rhythms—and uses them as foundational elements to explore the journey from merely surviving to truly thriving. It weaves in themes of baptism and renewal, asking how we collectively navigate and transcend the challenges that define survival. Purchase Tickets Access Services Contact Definition Theater to learn more about the accessibility of the venue. Lineup Carissa Lee (2025-2026 HCL Artist in Residence) Creator + Performer Carissa Lee Pinckney is a Chicago- and Los Angeles-based performance, sound, and theatrical artist. She earned her BFA in Theater from NYU and MFA in Performance from SAIC. Is a founding member of Suspended Culture art collective, which has performed at the bell hooks symposium and received the DCASE Performing Arts Grant. She has exhibited in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Quebec City. She was a 2025 High Concept Labs fellow, 2024 High Concept Labs Artist in Residence and a 2023 Elastic Arts Dark Matter Resident. She developed THRIVAL, an improvisational theatrical work exploring sonic technologies that help people thrive. Her writing has appeared in Mental Realness Magazine, and on Gray Area Stories podcast. The content of her work explores Blackness, intergenerational trauma, family archives, and mental health. She integrates recordings, writing, and Black Southern culture to materialize grief, isolation, and hope. Kezia Waters Artistic collaborator + Performer Kezia Waters is a Storyteller/ Performance Artist located in Chicago, IL. Their work lives between the worlds of ethnography, folklore, ritual and the living archive. Through surrealism they try to find things that are Holy, Whole, and Holds. A humanist fairy. They have performed in the Biennale d’art Performative de Rouyn-Noranda of Canada, Dazibao Gallery in Montreal and Recto- Verso in Ouebec City and numerous galleries around Chicago. Kezia was a 2023 In-Session Fellow at ThreeWalls, studying the Performance and Folklore of Zora Neale Hurston and also an Adjunct Professor of Acting & African American Theatre at Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio. He is also a founding member of Suspended Culture a Chicago based gallery performance collective. Avreeayl Ra Percussion Avreeayl has performed and /or recorded with Fred Anderson, Amiri Baraka, Fontella Bass, Lester Bowie, Ari Brown, Oscar Brown, Jr., Henry Butler, Henry Byrd ("Professor Longhair"), Hamid Drake, Malachi Favors, Donald Raphael Garrett, Charles Gayle, Henry Grimes, Billy Harper, Joseph Jarman, Edward “Kidd” Jordan, Nicole Mitchell, Sun Ra, Pharoah Sanders, Malachi Thompson, and many more. Avreeayl considers himself greatly blessed to hav...