Fatherland is a ritual theater performance that combines full-length film with a live performance that is filmed as an artistic adaption to creating during COVID. The piece is a deeply vulnerable exploration into the grief that comes from disconnection: disconnection from family, from culture, from homelands. Using memoir texts written by D’Meza while planning her absent Haitian father’s funeral, the recorded performance combines with a full-length visual film directed by Houston native Nate Edwards (the co-director of Houston rapper Tobe Ngwigwe’s music videos). A merging of Haitian spirituality, song, dance, and theatrical performance, the show acts as a container for a collective grief ritual—whereby audiences are invited to participate, alongside the artist, in a ritual designed to honor the lives of our ancestors and acknowledge the complicated legacies of our personal stories.

Funded in part by a grant from the City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance.

Archived in Rice University and Colgate University.

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