At a time when artists are battling funding crises and growing concerns over censorship and personal freedom, the simple act of creative expression can feel revolutionary. Perhaps that’s what makes Kindling Arts Festival such an essential part of Nashville’s arts community. Beyond offering an artistic home for some of the city’s most innovative makers, Kindling provides a vast array of practical support and resources — along with a deep commitment to each artist’s vision.
“Much of what we do at Kindling is the invisible labor of building the infrastructure that makes live performance possible,” says founding artistic director Jessika Malone. “Our work unburdens artists from the financial risks, administrative tasks and producing demands that can derail creative energy, so they can dream bigger, reach further and step into the spotlight with greater capacity and confidence.”
This year’s festival highlights 19 original projects — everything from dance and aerial acts to performance art and experimental theater. Taking place at eight venues throughout Nashville — including OZ Arts, Darkhorse Theater, Actors Bridge Studio and The Barbershop Theater, among others — it’s an ambitious program, digging into a wide range of issues surrounding queer identity, gun violence in schools, climate concerns and the carceral system.
“It’s an incredible lineup of work that makes room for celebration, reflection, critical dialogue and a brave envisioning of possible futures,” Malone says, noting the urgent need for art and community “at a time when we all have more questions than answers.”
Leading the charge is the delightfully irreverent musical theater performance collective Amm Skellars, with I Saw Goody Proctor With the Devil at OZ Arts. Billed as a “feminist electro-pop reimagining of the Salem Witch Trials,” this engaging work takes on serious themes of patriarchy and religious oppression without losing sight of the group’s signature style and wit.
“We were pretty clear from the beginning that while this show is steeped in parody, we didn’t want to shy away from some of the deeper themes we’re trying to explore,” says Amm Skellars co-founder Hannah Dorfman. “So one of the main questions we were trying to answer in writing this piece is, ‘What are we faithful to?’ And what happens to the imagination when it’s confined to one’s internal world because of oppressive systems and structures? In looking at the actual testimony in Salem, it’s very colorful and imaginative — it has a lot to do with the adolescent discovery of desire, as these girls were operating under really deplorable conditions and strict religious hierarchies. And that all felt incredibly relevant to us today, especially in light of our current political climate.”
Dorfman says Goody Proctor embraces something of an arena spectacle, with large-scale projections, pop songs and cheeky dance numbers.
“This project is much bigger than anything we’ve done before,” she says. “But Kindling has been amazing — especially with all of the technical aspects of the show. We’re using the projections in a way that keeps everything kind of immersed in Salem 1692, while the songs feel really colorful, with characters opening themselves up to different ideas. We’re exploring what happens to these girls when their religious systems conflict with a normal teenage way of being in the world. But it’s still very campy. And as they say, camp is the lie that tells the truth.”
IMGRNT's War & Beat
Another Kindling performer — the Iranian-born American multidisciplinary artist IMGRNT — is similarly exploring some hard truths with his work. Expanding on last year’s Kindling debut, his War & Beat at Actors Bridge Studio offers a “boundary-defying allegory for the immigrant experience through the lens of alien invasion and occupation.” Balancing acid-techno and psychedelic trance music with striking visuals and theatricality, the piece challenges our understanding of immigrant communities, raising the question: “Who is an invader, who is a neighbor, and who gets to decide?”
The festival of subversive performances runs July 18-21 throughout Nashville
IMGRNT says he originally visualized War & Beat as a music project, but quickly recognized the need for greater visual impact.
“I’ve always gravitated toward electronic music,” he says. “That’s generally what I listen to, and this style of music is represented in a lot of different immigrant communities. I also felt like this genre lends itself to the topics I’m discussing. I wanted it to sound provocative, and in-your-face and aggressive. But one of the biggest challenges in making electronic music is that you can have this symphony of sounds, but visually speaking, it’s just a person standing onstage with a laptop. So I wanted to come up with something much more dynamic, which could help convey the story on its own.”
The result is a darkly visceral, pulsating work that turns the standard alien invasion trope on its head.
“We’ve all seen the alien invasion story told from the perspective of the humans,” he says. “But I wanted to look at it from the alien’s perspective. Not in some abstract, highbrow way, but very explicitly. And obviously, the current political climate has only reinforced what I’m doing. I started talking about the project with [Kindling] right when Trump had come back in power and the ICE raids were starting to happen, so I was thinking about it in those terms. Then the Iran-Israel War started, and I was like: ‘Wow, that completely changes what this means to me.’
“But in presenting myself in this IMGRNT persona, I wear a mask,” he adds. “Because it’s not all about me. It’s about the immigrant perspective as a whole. It’s about the justified anger that we’re seeing in so many of these communities. I’m really excited for the performance, and interested to see how audiences respond. And I’m so grateful to Kindling for believing in this kind of work. When I first brought the idea to them, there was no hesitation, no ‘Oh, that might be too controversial.’ It was just, ‘You have this crazy idea? Bring it!’ And that’s what we’ve done.”
