About
What is The Miscegenations Project?
The Miscegenations Project is an innovative, educational performance & workshop that travels to schools and organizations.
Who are you, and why did you create this project?
We are Lea Robinson & Elizabeth Whitney and we are celebrating our ten year anniversary this year! We started working on The Miscegenations Project six years ago when we were legally married in Massachusetts, and we became interested in histories of U.S. marriage law. We realized that even if we had been a heterosexual couple, there was a time in this country when we still wouldn’t have been able to get married because we are also an interracial couple. So we decided to create a project that would allow us to talk about intersections of identity in U.S. culture and in our everyday lives.
We have been featured in GO Magazine’s “Captivating Couples” and “100 Women We Love.” Elizabeth holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies & Communication, and Lea holds a Master’s Degree in Education. We live in New York City where we work as both artists and academics. You can learn more about our individual endeavors at www.learobinson.com and www.learobinsonactor.com, and www.elizabethwhitney.com.
Okay, what does “miscegenations” mean? And, how in the world do you pronounce it?
Miscegenations is pronounced <mis-uh-geh-nations> and it is defined by The American Heritage Dictionary as “cohabitation, sexual relations, or marriage involving persons of different races.” In post-civil war U.S. history, anti-miscegenation laws were created by many individual states to prohibit interracial marriages. The last anti-miscegenation laws were removed as late as the 1960′s.
The U.S. has a long history of discriminatory marriage legislation from anti-miscegenation laws to present day Defense of Marriage Acts. This project takes such discriminatory marriage legislation as its starting point, and strives to create a larger dialogue that addresses historical and contemporary relationships between and among race, gender identity, and sexuality and other aspects of cultural identity such as age, nationality, religion, ability, and socio-economic status.
What happens in a workshop?
Our workshops are creative brainstorming sessions where we make difficult conversations about identity an enjoyable and community-building experience. We tailor each workshop to the needs of the campus or organization. Workshop times generally last from two hours (an interactive performance brainstorming session) to three days (for more in-depth creation of digital stories). No digital editing or performance experience is required. All participants are welcome.
How did you make this project happen? Where have you been? And, what’s next?
We began developing The Miscegenations Project when we were invited to participate in ARTSCAPE’s 2007 International Artist Residency on the Toronto Islands, where we recorded conversations with other artists about intersections among race, gender identity, and sexuality and created digital stories using film we took while in Toronto. THE MISCEGENATIONS PROJECT has been invited to workshop and present at Mickee Faust Co. (Tallahassee), Florida State University, Penn State University, Foreningen Ya!/The Yes! Foundation (Stockholm), The Femme Collective conference (Chicago), California State University Northridge, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, California State University Northridge, University of Massachusetts Boston, Imagining America Conference (Syracuse University), Public Memory & Ethnicity Conference (Lewis & Clark College) Broad Vocabulary Books (Milwaukee, WI), DramaRama Performance Festival (New Orleans), the National Communication Association Conference (San Antonio), and Gallery X (New Bedford, MA).
We are currently developing a brand new show called Safe Zone–an interactive, comedic look at safe zone training workshops. Look for it touring to a campus near you!
