The Pla[y/n] for Reparation$

The Pla[y/n] for Reparation$ is an interactive performance inviting participants to learn about, discuss, envision, and practice individual and collective healing. Upon arrival, audience members encounter a series of Yes/No questions—a branching decision-tree structure that guides each person into different participant groups based on identity, opinion, and willingness to engage. This consent-driven design gives audiences agency in determining the depth and direction of their experience. The work draws structural and conceptual guidance from the California Reparations Report, grounding the evening in historical facts and reparative possibilities at the policy level.

Artist Biographies

Eric Avery

Eric Avery was born and raised on the eastside of Topeka, Kansas—a city shaped by redlining, divestment, disproportionate environmental hazards, and other harms that marginalized communities across the country, including the San Francisco Bay Area, continue to face. To support individual and collective healing, Avery works as a cultural organizer and interdisciplinary artist with over 20 years of professional experience in theatre, interactive performance, and community-based projects, using embodied practices to move social justice from ideas into action. Since 2013, Avery has centered a relationship-based framework in their creative practice and organizing, collaborating with non-profit organizations, municipalities, social service agencies, universities, farms, community centers, prisons, art galleries, public spaces, and private homes, while also independently creating more than 25 original productions. Avery holds a BA in Theatre & Film from the University of Kansas and an MFA in Theatre Arts from Towson University, and their work has been recognized with a Bessie Award (Outstanding Visual Design), Lavender Magazine Best of List (Outstanding Performance), an Elliot Norton Award (Outstanding Design), a 2024 MAP Grant, and support from Zellerbach: Community Arts, East Bay Fund for Artists, the Dresher Ensemble Artist Residency, TBA CA$H Grant, Rainin: New & Experimental Works, and more.