Freeing Up Shame experiments with performance as a tool to release shame.

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Stories of real-life experiences of shame that were submitted to an open were written up and alongside poems by Audre Lorde and Paula Gunn Allen; these were used as triggers during the performance.

Four performers were asked to read the stories to each other and then write words, draw, or leave whatever marks that came to them during the piece on a big blackboard, first using white and then black spray paint. These instructions were given at the beginning of the performance, in which participants were free to enact what they felt using simple movements—walking, reading, writing, drawing—and then jointly creating a painting of words and marks of shame. On the blackboard, the face of 'white woman' slowly appeared as participants were using the white spray paint, and then gradually disappeared again as the black spray paint was used.

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