Pageants
Purim
Photos By Erik McGregor
Great Small Works has been at the heart of the Aftselakhis Spectacle Committee’s diasporist, queer, abolitionist, feminist, antifascist, trans, & very very maximalist Purimshpil since it’s inception. A Purim Shpil is a traditional folk play put on by Jews all over the world for the late winter holiday of Purim. The Aftselakhis Spectacle Committee (TASC) hosts a public process that lasts 3 months. TASC invites people into all aspects of work from political education, to dancing, singing, puppet building, costume making, writing the show and performing in it. The Purim crew feeds participants, provides metros and childcare to help folk join in. They use the prep period (at Great Small Works Studio) to bring people together who are usually segregated from each other. They carve out time and space to hang out, move together, and summon ancestral stories. The carnival force at the heart of Purim summons the team and crowd to cultivate inspiring confusion. The community finds new formations of thought, and activism by way of the artistic process. The art has to be excellent, and the analysis too. Both joyfully infuse the other to bring NYC to a new “place.” 1,500 costumed People attend the performances. The Great Small Studio is the space in which the process takes root.
Art and Tradition in a Time of Uprisings
By Gabriel LevineExamining radical reinventions of traditional practices, ranging from a queer reclamation of the Jewish festival of Purim to an Indigenous remixing of musical traditions.
Parades & Processions
Great Small Works is deeply involved in the re-definition of processional performance as community street theater of the 21st century. They are fascinated by the countless variations of performance in motion through (public) space. GSW collaborates with artists, community members and activists worldwide to cultivate and defend this important aspect of culture.
The company staged annual street pageants for the D.U.M.B.O. Art Under the Bridge Festival from 2001-2014, beginning with the Procession to End All Evil (2001), The Law of the Downfall of Empires (2002), The Pom-Pom Tattoo, A Procession of Alternative Spellings, Signals, and Continuous Pleating (2003), Do You Know the Way to San Blasé? (2004) An Answer on the Day You Call (2005), and The Spectacle of the Rising Tide (2006) and beyond with The Greatest Smallest Parade (2010), Love Letter to the People of Iran (2010), Truth In Gay Clothes (2011). The Sukkos Mob (2007-2015), The Hemispheric Casserole (2013), and the HONK Festivals of Radical Brass Bands (ongoing).
Videos
An Answer on the Day You Call (2005)
The Spectacle of the Rising Tide (2006)
The Greatest Smallest Parade (2010)
The Sukkos Mob (2007-2015)
HONK Festivals
Tournefeuille - New York
More Photos