Mine to Keep

Mine to Keep is a folk-horror performance rooted in Black American storytelling traditions and the enduring, shape-shifting life of folklore. Drawing from “The Headless Haint” and “The Golden Arm,” the work brings two tales of restless spirits, stolen bodies, desire, and possession into conversation with histories of Black labor, bodily autonomy, and the struggle to belong wholly to oneself. At the center of Mine to Keep is a question: What does it mean to possess something—or someone—in a world shaped by histories in which Black bodies and labor have been treated as property? The work considers ownership not only as a material condition, but as something that reaches into intimacy, safety, memory, inheritance, and spiritual life. Haunting becomes a way of asking what remains unresolved, what refuses to disappear, and what might return to demand recognition. Blending movement, text, puppetry, object theatre, sound, and ritual, Mine to Keep is guided by a large articulated Griot puppet—a storyteller, witness, and keeper of memory who moves between worlds. Through horror, humor, transformation, and embodied storytelling, the work treats folklore as a living archive: carried through bodies, altered through retelling, and made new each time a story changes hands.