May 2026 Torch 20th Anniversary Special Feature: Sharon Bridgforth

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Inducted in the Texas Institute of Letters in 2025, Sharon Bridgforth is a widely published author, a United States Artists Fellow, winner of Yale's Windham Campbell Prize in Drama, and a New Dramatists alumnae.

Sharon Bridgforth collaborates with interdisciplinary artists and audiences to install moving soundscapes of her ritual/jazz texts in celebration of African-American Southern Migration histories/queerly. Sharon's work is archived at The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library, New York, NY and at The Austin History Center-Austin Public Library. Inducted in the Texas Institute of Letters, Sharon is an Associate Company Member at Pillsbury House + Theatre, a Doris Duke Performing Artist, recipient of Yale's Windham Campbell Prize in Drama, the Playwrights’ Center Core Membership, McKnight National Fellowship and the USA Artist Fellowship. She has received support from Creative Capital, MAP Fund and the National Performance Network, is a New Dramatists Alum and MAP Fund Scaffolding for Practicing Artists Coach. Sharon has served as Guest Faculty for the Macondo Writers Workshop, founded by Sandra Cisneros and has served as Artist In-Residence for: Thousand Currents; Brown University’s MFA Playwriting Program; University of Iowa’s MFA Playwrights Program; The Theatre School at DePaul University; and The Department of Performance Studies at Northwestern University. She has had the privilege of being part of the Center for African and African American Studies and the Black Studies Department at the University of Texas at Austin for more than twenty years. The Callaloo Journal, Issue 43.4 features some of the department's history. Sharon's new book, before you go: an Offering was published by Tripwire Harlot Press in 2025. 53rd State Press published bull-jean & dem/dey back in 2022. Widely published, Sharon's work is featured in: Volume 110, No. 4, Winter 2022 of The Yale Review; Teaching Black, The Craft of Teaching on Black Life and Literature; Mouths of Rain an Anthology of Black Lesbian Thought; Feminist Studies Vol 48 Number 1, honoring 40 years of This Bridge Called My Back and But Some of Us Are Brave!; We Are Each Other's Liberation-Black & Asian Feminist Solidarities; and Playwriting with Purpose. More at sharonbridgforth.com.

dat Black Mermaid Man Lady/Oracle Deck

The question: What is Infinite Love Offering?

The spread order:

1. The Present Moment

2. Your Inner Knowing

3. Hidden Influences

4. Advice

5. Possible Roads

dat Black Mermaid Man Lady/Oracle Deck

There are nine Oracles (characters from the dat Black Mermaid Man Lady/Performance Novel). Each speaks on four subjects. The text on the back of the cards is from the dat Black Mermaid Man Lady/Performance Novel. In addition, each Oracle has one blank card, which, if pulled, means “you already know.” In other words, they ain’t responding to your question or the situation at hand because you already know what is in your highest interest/greatest good.

Centered in African-American artistic and cultural traditions, Sharon Bridgforth's "dat Black Mermaid Man Lady" offers multiple ways via multiple projects for communities to engage in work and conversations that activate collective wisdom and self-determination. dat Black Mermaid Man Lady/The Show premiered at Pillsbury House + Theatre in Minneapolis and is streaming on the Twin Cities PBS channel. View it and more at:

https://sharonbridgforth.com/dbmml

dat Black Mermaid Man Lady/Oracle & dem Blessings decks, along with the dat Black Mermaid Man Lady/Performance Novel will be published in 2027 by Sinister Wisdom (https://sinisterwisdom.org) For more, join Sharon's mailing list at: https://sharonbridgforth.com.

THE INTERVIEW

This interview was conducted between Sharon Bridgforth and Jae Nichelle on March 18, 2026.

Firstly, these oracle cards are gorgeous. What led to your decision to create cards using the text and characters from the dat Black Mermaid Man Lady/Performance Novel? Can you speak to your process of picking the excerpts for each card?

All of my work starts in what my mentor, Laurie Carlos, would call the bone marrow. For me what that means is that I’m investigating what needs to be healed in me. However, with research, Spirit, creative process, collaboration and rigor, the Work becomes itself and ultimately it isn’t about me . . . it is an Offering for those that receive it.

I began the process of writing dat Black Mermaid Man Lady/Performance Novel because I was dealing with grief after three of my six parents transitioned. My daughter and I did a lot of processing and storytelling and a lot of laughing and appreciating them, which really helped me hear them/learn from them/and heal my relationship with them. This lead me towards writing what became the dat Black Mermaid Man Lady/Performance Novel. After Working the Work/after the piece became itself . . . the characters kept talking. So I said, I’ma make you Oracles and you can talk to everybody!

There are 9 Oracles (characters from the Performance Novel) in the deck. They each speak on four things, which include a blank card. If you pull a blank card, it means you already know. The text on the cards is from the script. The process of creating the deck happened very swiftly. It moved through me and didn’t require a lot of “thinking.” It was more feeling and following Divine Intuition. I was very fortunate that a visual artist that I adore and deeply respect, Yasmin Hernandez (https://yasminhernandez.art), was available and willing to work with me as the artist for the deck. We worked seamlessly together and with a lot of Joy. Yasmin's visual art, Knowing and connection activated the deck.

In terms of pulling cards when I do readings, my question is - what is Infinite Love Offering or what does Infinite Love want us to Know right now?

The dat Black Mermaid Man Lady project includes a show, oracle deck, home project, dem blessings, the performance novel, and a performance installation. That’s amazing. What have these different mediums revealed to you about your creative process and artistic desires?

I feel really fortunate to have had funders, organizations, institutions, artists and audiences that really showed up for me and made it possible for me to explore the work in all these different ways over a long period of time. This includes long-time collaborators, like my daughter, Sonja Perryman, and the literal genius (MacArthur Fellow) Walter Kitundu.

The thing that I learned is - for me the work is never done. My curiosity about how a piece might Live continues, but after a certain amount of time and various kinds of explorations, it becomes clear to me that it's time to surrender the Work to what it wants to be out in the world and move on. I do feel that I continue to learn from the Work, and I get to experience it over and over - even after my surrender of it, because there are so many people that are connected to it in different ways. So I get to remain in Circle/in conversation with it.

The dat Black Mermaid Man Lady/Performance Novel, the Oracle Deck and dem Blessings will be published in 2027 by Sinister Wisdom, so I’ll get to be in process again out in the world with the Work/which I’m really excited about. Also, 53rd State Press is publishing a collection of my Work that will include dat Black Mermaid Man Lady/The Show. dat Black Mermaid Man Lady/The Show is streaming on the Twin Cities PBS platform.

You speak often about working in the lineage of “theatrical jazz,” explaining in a 2022 interview that “like a jazz artist… you practice with rigor, but what you're really trying to do is to open so that the portal of the thing that you haven't done, the sound that you've never heard can come through.” This type of process involves letting go of perfection and the ideas you have about how your work should come out. Did relinquishing control in this way come naturally to you, or has it been a journey?

It has been quite a Journey. A Journey that has Opened different roads of growth and healing in ways that I would never have experienced if not for the Work. I think that because I was not formally trained as a performance maker, and because I was shaped by groundbreaking artists whose focus was on using art as a vehicle for social justice . . . I was free and encouraged in following curiosity, passion and intuition. AND early on I had the privilege of being Blessed to work with seasoned performers, like Sonja Parks, Florinda Bryant, and Zell Miller III. I had support early on from Lori Wilson and organizations including (the original) Frontera@Hyde Park Theatre, Women & Their Work, allgo and the National Performance Network. I was supported by academics like Omi Osun Joni L. Jones and E. Patrick Johnson. I was mentored by seminal artists like Laurie Carlos, Robbie McCauley, raúlrsalinas, Marsha Anne Gomez, and Ana Sisnett.

In my early days in Austin (I moved there from L.A. in 1989), I worked as a disease intervention specialist, a community organizer, and a HIV outreach worker. By 1998, I chose to become a self-employed artist because I felt that I couldn't continue to grow as an artist and have "day jobs." Weaving what I learned as an activist was already a part of how I Visioned my Work and process. As I grew, I reached a point where more surrender was required of me in order for me to move deeper and more expansively into my creative practice and artistic voice and imagination. That's a whole nutha/long Circle of stories though.

Your newest book, before you go: an Offering came out in 2025. What do you wish more people knew about this project?

Everything I have ever written. All the roads I've gone down and the Portals I've walked through lead me to this book. To the Work of me metaphysically looking my Mother in her eyes and saying, I Love you and I know that you Love me. It has Opened the doors for me to extend forgiveness to myself for the ways that I feel I failed as a Mother. And this tending has manifested grace that I now see and feel in every aspect of my Life.

Ultimately - this the book is an Offering for the reader. My prayer is that it supports Opening/Shifting/healing for those that Journey with it as they walk with and tend to whatever shards of Love that is broken inside of them that they choose to focus on.

What spots in LA do you recommend writers visit if they’re seeking inspiration or community?

Well, I know this is not really a response to that question...but here is what that question makes Rise in me . . .

For me it has always been about people vs places. Growing up here and having returned home after having lived away for 28 years, this is still true. Los Angeles is huge. It is FILLED with incredible people, organizations, events, gatherings, happening and neighborhoods that Offer global experiences - powerfully/beautifully/and connectedly. For instance, one of my all time favorite/don't miss L.A. happenings is FandangObon, which I got to know about and become a part of because I had the Blessing of being in Circle with it's founder, Nobuko Miyamoto, at the Art2Action and Pangea World Theater's National Institute for Directing and Ensemble Creation, in Minneapolis, MN. (which Laurie Carlos introduced me to back in the day). FandangObon is, to me, a perfect example of the real L.A. One that gathers/welcomes/and activates cultures-traditions-people from many places in magnificent powerful art filled Circles.

No genre can hold you. Your plays are poetic and musical and leap off the page into interactive, communal performances/rituals. Who are your inspirations for writing that defies boundaries?

To name just a few: My mentors, that I listed above. The elders in my blood family.

Plus (not in order):

Langston Hughes

Sekou Sundiata

Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and Urban Bush Women

Ntozake Shange

Michelle T. Clinton

Nobuko Miyamoto

Tons of great books, music and documentaries have Inspired me. Like:

Tootie’s Last Suit, All on a Mardi Gras Day and Zarico

"Field to Factory: Voices of the Great Migration: Recalling the African- American Migration to the Northern Cities" by Smithsonian Folkways

Video and audio: Schomburg’s Louis Armstrong Jazz Oral History Project

Katherine Dunham’s book, Island Possessed

Clip of her field work (Sango)

Satchmo, My Life in New Orleans, by Louis Armstrong

The Dance Claimed Me: A Biography of Pearl Primus

by Murray Schwartz and Peggy Schwartz

Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe by Gayle Wald

Africans in Colonial LA., by Gwendolyn Midlo Hall

Faith In Time: The Life Of Jimmy Scott, by David Ritz

To Be or Not to Bop, Memoir by Dizzy Gillespie

The Warmth of Other Suns, by Isabelle Wilkerson

My wife, Dr. Omi Osun Joni L. Jone's seminal book, Theatrical Jazz: Performance, Àṣẹ, and the Power of the Present Moment

And MUCH MORE!!

What is feeding you these days?

My grandbaby.

The sense of awe and wonder and discovery that I experience when I with her. The Blessing that I get to Know/and Fully feel - that she is the evidence that Love Is.

You were Torch Magazine’s very first featured ‘Flame’ in 2006! In that interview, when asked to define success, you said “how I’m living is a reflection of my success.” If you could, what would you tell your twenty-years-ago self about how you’re living now?

I decided to pull a dat Black Mermaid Man Lady/dem Blessing in response to this.

See the attached card (#28):

How can people support you right now?

Join my mailing list: https://sharonbridgforth.com

And DON'T TAG "me" on no social media - I ain't there, so if you see "me" it ain't me. I am only on Substack (where mostly I just read what other people write vs a lot of posting).

Name another Black woman writer people should know.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

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