AFTERWORDS 

AFTERWORDS is the Center for the Arts' public program series, asking: what happens after the encounter with the work of art? Each year, AFTERWORDS is organized around a keyword addressing different dimensions of art’s capacity to not only reflect but to transform the world.

Read Democracy in Action: Three Alumnae Discuss Collaboration on New Performance Work in The Wesleyan Connection.

Learn more about upcoming AFTERWORDS events.

Image: Saidiya Hartman ’83, Hon. ’19, Kiara Benn ’20, and Kaneza Schaal ’06 in October 2024. Photo by Sandy Aldieri of Perceptions Photography. 
2025
September April March
2024
October

2025

September

AFTERWORDS: entanglement - Okwui Okpokwasili, Joshua Lubin-Levy '06, and Noémie Solomon
Tuesday, September 16, 2025 at 4:30pm
Reading Room, South Gallery, Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery
The first event in the AFTERWORDS: entanglement series of public programs will feature Brooklyn-based performer, choreographer, and writer Okwui Okpokwasili online and Center for the Arts Director Joshua Lubin-Levy '06 and writer, teacher, and curator Noémie Solomon, Director of the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance, in-person.

April

AFTERWORDS: assembly—mayfield brooks
Monday, April 14, 2025 at 12:00pm
Jones Room, Theater Studios, 275 Washington Terrace, Middletown, Connecticut
The third event in the AFTERWORDS series of public talks will feature the 2025–2026 CFA Artist in Residence mayfield brooks. Presented in conjunction with the course THEA 275 "All Together Now: Theater and Theatricality" taught by Director of the Center for the Arts and Visiting Assistant Professor of Theater Joshua Lubin-Levy '06.

March

Encounter Machines
Monday, March 3, 2025 at 5:00pm
The Russell House, 350 High Street, Middletown

Encounter Machines is a work-in-progress manifesto that seeks to find new relevance between architecture and opera, exploring questions of scale, queerness, fragmentation, failure, and more. The text draws on Peter Zuspan’s work designing spaces for performance (including the National Sawdust and Bushwick Starr) as well as his ongoing research on the spatial limits and possibilities of new and experimental opera. The presentation will be followed by a discussion with the multidisciplinary artist Helga Davis.

2024

October

AFTERWORDS: assembly—Saidiya Hartman ’83, Hon. ’19 in conversation with Kaneza Schaal ’06, moderated by Kiara Benn ’20
Wednesday, October 2, 2024 at 4:30pm
Shapiro Center for Creative Writing and Criticism, 116 Mount Vernon Street, Room 102, Middletown, Connecticut
Saidiya Hartman ’83, Hon. ’19 will be in conversation with Kaneza Schaal ’06 moderated by Kiara Benn ’20 as they discuss Litany for Grieving Sisters. The new performance work is a ceremony for life at the end of the world based on Hartman’s text (originally published in the journal Representations, 2022).