Home / Chronology / LOW / More About LOW The following articles appeared in Actors Theatre's subscriber newsletter prior to the 2006 Humana Festival LOW Rha Goddess is a world-renowned performance/recording artist, poet and social activist. Her debut album Soulah Vibe was dubbed "one of the year’s coolest records" by Time magazine in 1999. A legendary voice in the hip-hop community she coined the term "flowetry," a blend of hip-hop, spoken word and song, and worked along side other trailblazers in the field such as Mos Def, KRS-ONE, and reg e. gaines. As a community activist she founded The Next Wave of Women & Power, co-founded the Sista II Sista Freedom School for Young Women of Color, and the World Conference Against Racism. Essence magazine even recognized Goddess as one of "30 Women to Watch" in the new millennium. With all her success as an artist and activist to date, it’s hard to believe she had more conservative ambitions growing up. "When I was a little kid I ran around telling people I wanted to be a doctor," Goddess says. Then during her freshman year at Vassar College she looked at all the schooling needed to become a physician and she decided "I really don’t think so." But that impulse continues to beat in her creative spirit as an artist. "What I’ve come to realize is that my desire to be a doctor was about healing. And I think that [my work] is just another way in which I’m able to express and bring that energy back." In Low’s Journey: Meditations Trilogy, Pt. I, Goddess channels that energy in order to address the question: what is insanity? Like the chemist she once was, Goddess mixes a kinetic blend of poetry, B-boying, storytelling, visuals and sound to create a one-person theatrical brew powerful enough to shatter the whispers and shame surrounding mental illness. "For me at the heart of this piece is the epidemic of what mental illness is, and the limited capacities we have as a community and a society to confront it, to talk about it, and to create a compassionate response to both the clinical and universal notion of insanity." Spearheading the conversation is Low’s Journey, the first installment of Meditations with the Goddess, a trilogy of full-evening performances written by Goddess and staged in collaboration with artists in theater, dance, music and interactive media. Part manifesto, part family history, and part spiritual evocation, the trilogy explores all-American issues through the lens of an iconic character. In Low’s Journey, Goddess portrays three very unique identities. Lowquesha Goddess is sassy, courageous, and funny with a deep heart and a curious mind. Infinity is the cosmic mother earth, the mother of universal energy who shadows the journey of the Shaman, the gatekeeper, to warn the traveler of the challenges and adversity ahead. Then there is the character Rha, the guide energy and not-so-neutral bystander, who experiences all the action and brokers the discussions between the other two. All these characters reflect in some form Goddess’ alter egos and represent a spirit of unbounded and controlled energy inherent in all of us. Each character is charged with the task of posting a vision and clearing a path for an authentic exploration of insanity and mental illness. Various "meditations" showcase Goddess’ dialogue with the underworld and her personal mission to listen and learn how to give voice to the unspeakable; things that words cannot convey; things that get stuck in pride, fear and normal reasoning. The piece seeks to move that which is deeply personal and private out to the forefront and into the universal. To help traverse the rocky and often treacherous terrain of the human psyche Goddess recruited a diverse and first-rate group of sound, visual and movement artists to chart her story. Netherlands-based visual artists Ruud Lanfermeijer and Remko van Dokkum have designed a state-of-the-art interactive system that heightens the visceral soul of the piece. Their sophisticated, yet minimalistic media design uses video, robotics, light and sound triggering mechanism to create a gripping and compelling visual canvas. Award winning choreographer Rennie Harris provides Goddess with a meta-physical movement vocabulary to support her beatbox language and rhythms. And a cross-Atlantic collaboration between three innovative sound designers and composers score the vast emotional, physical and psychological landscape in Low’s Journey. "I feel like [mental illness] is the new ‘coming out’ and I think we are beginning to see a movement where more and more people are willing to say ‘I suffer with depression.’ ‘I struggle with bipolar disorder.’ ‘I struggle with schizophrenia.’ I believe that the greatest revolutionary act that any of us can take on in life is to know, honor and give voice to who we really are. This is the struggle: to be real, and in being real, each of us has the opportunity to be well, and when we are well, we are free!" — Mervin P. Antonio RHA GODDESS Rha Goddess’ artistic vision is both self-defined and self-realized. Goddess is one of the first women in hip-hop to co-create, independently market and commercially distribute her own music world-wide. Not limited to hip-hop, her work draws on a dizzying array of artistic styles and genres, but the result is thoughtful, sophisticated, and deeply authentic. Born in New Rochelle, New York, Goddess received her khemetic spiritual name in 1998 as part of a 12 week cleansing fast with Queen Afua. As part of this vision quest, Goddess reconnected to her childhood love of music and performance after spending a decade in the sciences. While attending a community event she met the man who would become her greatest mentor, reg. e. gaines, a performance artist whose work fuses hip-hop rhythms and socially conscious poetry. gaines was a phenomenal influence on Goddess’ career, editing her first poem and then encouraging her to come to the Nuyorican Poet’s Café, an enclave for spoken word, hip-hop, poetry and slam artists. Goddess was a hesitant performer until gaines "pushed me on stage." At the Nuyorican she bore witness to legends like Dael Orlandersmith, Hattie Gosset and Cheryl Brice Taylor and met future friends and collaborators Willie Perdomo, Mildred Ruiz, and Steven Sapp. The energy and momentum of the emerging New York poetry scene captured Goddess’ imagination. Despite her experiences at the Nuyorican, Goddess "had no desire or thought at all for being an artist" until the death of five close friends and relatives (including her mother) within five months in 1995. She turned to writing to help her through the healing process. "It was therapy," recalls Goddess. "It really was about sharing with people, having them acknowledge you and hear that experience." A friend encouraged her to share her experiences with others, and she found herself reading her poetry at an open mic night in a tiny Manhattan café. The community support was instant and unwavering, and people began requesting her to perform at events. In 1996 she began working with N8tive Son (also known as Marco Jenkins), and that collaboration launched her into another new realm: poetry fused with music. N8tive Son’s project, called Eargasms, called on the talents of poets and musicians to craft a form that combined smart lyrics with distinctive rhythms that drew from contemporary hip-hop and spoken word. Her delivery evolved into a whole new performance style, and the success of Eargasms led to more performance opportunities. The growing sense of purpose and accomplishment convinced Goddess that writing and performance were part of her life’s work. New tragedy found Goddess in 2000 when five loved ones were diagnosed with severe mental illness. "I watched people’s complete personalities shift. They became different people," recalls Goddess. This adversity, compounded by the suicide of a dear friend in 2002, inspired her to write a poem, "How Do You Spell Relief?" This poem is the seed for Low’s Journey: Meditations Trilogy, Pt. I. Goddess has chosen to explore storytelling in the genre of theatre. Low’s Journey is a theatre piece, because "I didn’t think I could say what I needed to say in three minutes and thirty-five seconds. Theatre gave me a real vehicle to hold what I needed to convey." She has found theatre to be a nurturing environment for her distinctive vision. "People in the theatrical community were really willing to extend support and express interest in the work," she says. Goddess performed "How Do You Spell Relief" as part of Rhythmicity, a collaborative piece with other hip-hop poets—including gaines, Perdomo, Sapp, and Ruiz—which premiered in the 2003 Humana Festival. We couldn’t be more grateful to welcome its next incarnation back to our stage. — Jamie Bragg