Honey Pot Performance is a creative collaborative chronicling Afro-feminist and Black diasporic subjectivities amidst the pressures of contemporary global life.
Honey Pot Performance enlists modes of creative expressivity to examine the nuances of human relationships including the ways we negotiate identity, belonging and difference in our lives and cultural memberships. Dismantling the vestiges of oppressive social relationships is part of the work. Through critical performance, public humanities programming, and deep community engagement, we emphasize everyday ways of valuing the human.
Following in the footsteps of cultural workers such as Zora Neale Hurston, Beryl McBurnie, Pearl Primus and Katherine Dunham, Honey Pot Performance forefronts African diasporic performance traditions. We draw upon a central notion found in performance studies, black feminist discourse and sociology: non-Western, everyday popular and/or folk forms of cultural performance are valuable sites of knowledge production and cultural capital for subjectivities that often exist outside of mainstream communities.
Meida Teresa McNeal (she/her) is Artistic and Managing Director of Honey Pot Performance. Over the past two decades, she has produced numerous creative projects as both a solo artist and with Honey Pot Performance, with works performed in Illinois, Missouri, Rhode Island, Ohio, California, and Trinidad. She received her PhD in Performance Studies (Northwestern) and her MFA in Choreography & Dance History (Ohio State). Awards include Field Foundation’s Leaders for a New Chicago, 3Arts Award in Dance, Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist, and the Links’ Hall Co-Missions Fellowship. An Independent Artist and Scholar at the intersection of performance studies, dance, and critical ethnography, she is part time faculty at University of Chicago and Columbia College Chicago. Meida also works with the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events' Executive Administration team as the Senior Manager of Arts & Community Impact Investments building and implementing artist recovery programs and creative placemaking grantmaking initiatives. Prior to this role, Meida worked with the Chicago Park District as Arts & Culture Manager supporting community arts partnerships, youth arts, cultural stewardship, and civic engagement initiatives.
Abra M. Johnson is a member of the Education and Curriculum Committee, and a co-founding member of Honey Pot Performance (HPP). Most recently, she is a Co-Movement Director for "1919", Steppenwolf Theatre's production for Young Adults. A proud Chicagoan and Westsider, she has held a variety of local educational activist posts for two decades. Currently, she is a tenured Assistant Professor of Sociology and co-chair of Social Sciences at Malcolm X College. The nodes and focal points of her fascination and scholarly interests, converge acutely within the music- and movement-driven genres and cultures of Hip-Hop and (Chicago) House. These experiences and interests are the channels through which Professor Johnson pushes beyond academic boundaries to engage with the complexity of communities that defines and typifies global cities like her hometown, Chicago.
Kimeco Roberson (she/her) has served Chicago’s communities for over 20 years through work in arts administration, youth development, social justice, and civics. Prior to joining Marwen, Kimeco held multilevel leadership and administrative roles at Heartland Alliance, Chicago Public Schools, Chicago Park District, After School Matters, and other nonprofit, city, and community organizations. Kimeco is the current Director of Programs and Partnerships at Marwen A trained circle keeper, graduate of Columbia College Chicago, and board member of Honey Pot Performance, Kimeco is also a vocalist and songwriter!
Aisha Josina Jean-Baptiste (she/her/li) is Marketing & Communications Director and co-founding member of Honey Pot Performance. A Brooklyn native who was raised in Illinois, she proclaimed herself a poet, at the age of 9. With a background in organizing and freedom-fighting, she is a trauma-informed, Licensed Clinical Social Worker, trained in liberatory praxis. Since 2016, Aisha, a current resident and explorer of Baltimore, has been providing community-based outpatient mental health services, to Baltimore city/county individuals and families. Aisha imagines an existence in which Black women’s genius, value, creativity, magic, voices, and power will be amplified through a sustainable practice of self-love, self-determination and self- maintenance, without apology. Aisha’s favorite place to be is at the mic and on the stage with her HPP co-collaborators, making lived experiences into beautiful, timeless works. Her greatest contribution to the world is her daughter Ajilè.
2021 Threewalls RaDLab fellow Felicia Holman (Emeritus) is a native Chicagoan, independent cultural producer/facilitator, and a co-founder of Afrodiasporic feminist creative collective Honey Pot Performance. She is also a 2021 Re:Place Research and Performance resident artist, and a co-organizer of the re-launched Performance Response Journal platform.
Felicia's creative/ professional and social practices are firmly grounded in critical thought, intersectionality, community building, and embodied storytelling. Her recent projects include commissioned performances for Illinois Humanities and the 5th annual Instigation Festival, as well as written contributions at See Chicago Dance, 6018North, and The Quarantine Times (published by Public Media Institute).
Felicia relishes her artrepreneurial life and sums it up in 3 words---"Creator, Connector, Conduit".
Jo de Presser (aka Marlon Billups) is a DJ, Poet, and currently, Music Curator and Collaborator for Honey Pot Performance. Jo, has been DJ’ing throughout Chicago House scene since 1987. Starting at DiVinci Manor with promoter Quik Claude. He DJ’ed along side such Chicago House legends as Lil’ Louis, Farley Jackmaster Funk, Gene Hunt, Terry Hunter, and more. His works of poetry and spoken word have been published by Third World Press, Chicago State University, Robert Morris University and more. He has performed poetry and DJ’ed in Festivals, Clubs, Radio Stations, Universities, and in various cities and Canada.
Jennifer Ligaya is an AfroPinay sound, movement, and performance practitioner, and healer born and raised in Chicago with an interdisciplinary background in visual art, vocal performance, dance, and theater. Mother to a Scorpio son and full time PhD student of Performance Studies at Northwestern University, her original work includes solo and collaborative performance compositions and sound installations. A sponsored artist, grant recipient, and commissioned multimedia artist, her compositions amplify critical conversations around identity, liberatory practices, ancestral indigenous knowledge systems, and moments of communal healing, through the weaving of traditional and contemporary sound, performance, and personal ancestral folk arts practices. The newest core member of Honey Pot Performance, her current creative practice explores Afro-Asian feminist subjectivities and speculative arts, indigenous healing and survival practices, and the genealogies of anticolonial spiritual-political resistance.
Website: www.jenniferligaya.com
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