NILE HARRIS
Nile Harris is a performer and director of live works of art. He has done a few things and hopes to do a few more, God willing.
Through performance, Harris creates immersive experiences that use the body on stage to manipulate one’s relationship to time and self-perception. Core to his art is an interrogation of cultural histories and narratives that construct and enforce systems of power that make up “the American project.” Harris often employs improvisation, embracing its inherent relationship to failure, as a critical strategy of temporal transformation inside the apparatus of the theater.
His performance this house is not a home explores absence, abjection, and American nationalism. Through the insurrection of an amplified bounce house, the ensemble performance jukes and careens in paying homage to his childhood friend and late collaborator, Trevor Bazile (1996-2021) – the two working as a collaborative duo HAZILE BARRIS. The performance, which was co-commissioned and presented by Ping Chong and Company, premiered at Abrons Arts Center in 2023 and was restaged as a part of the Under the Radar Festival in 2024.
shows
THIS HOUSE IS NOT A HOME
Creator, Director, & Performer Nile Harris
Performers Crackhead Barney, Malcolm-x Betts, Cricket Brown, Tony Jenkins, Brandi Mckinnon
Lighting Design Thom Weaver
Costume Design Victor Jeffreys II
Sound Design Slowdanger & GENG PTP
Produced by Ping Chong and Company and Abrons Arts Center
‘this house is not a home’ is a five person performance combining dance, live music, clowning, scripted lectures, improvised crowd work into a politically provoking and immersive theatrical experience for a proscenium stage.This frenzied rant of online logic is staged around a children’s inflatable bounce castle purchased by Harris’ friend, interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker Trevor Bazile (born Miami, FL, 1996-2021). Over the course of the performance, the castle comes to represent an ephemeral monument, a besieged U.S. capital, and a simulacrum of hollow liberal care
Stage: Proscenium
Capacity: 150-500
Traveling Personnel: 9
Running time: 90 minutes
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TEMPORARY BOYFRIEND
Performers Nile Harris and Malcolm-x Betts
Scenic and Technical Director Dyer Rhoads
Costume Design Malcolm-x Betts
Sound Design Geng PTP
Commissioned by Chocolate Factory Theater, Under the Radar Festival, and Ping Chong and Company.
For the world premiere of Temporary Boyfriend, artists Malcolm-x Betts and Nile Harris stage the nuanced poetics of their long-term collaboration. Drawing from past performances in each others works including Niggas at Sundown at New York Live Arts and this house is not a home at Abrons Arts Center, Harris and Betts render the friction and intrigue at the pith of their connection in this improvisatory duet. As the pair traverses the barren architecture of The Chocolate Factory, they journey across various touch points of relationality between Black gay men. From the kinship of ancestors lost to the AIDS epidemic, to contemporary manifestations of ephemeral gay brotherhood, Temporary Boyfriend is an intimate portrait of the aesthetics of proximity and estrangement.
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MINOR B
Written and Directed by Nile Harris
Co-Director Dyer Rhoads
Cast: Nile Harris, Jim Fletcher, Tony Jenkins, Lysis (Ley), Jonah Rollins
Sound Design: Kwami Winfield
Scenic Design: Marie de Testa
Commissioned by The Shed’s Open Call and presented in association with Ping Chong and Company
In his own words, Harris describes minor b as “minor b is a play. It’s an unfinished play about love. Or more specifically it’s a love letter to my lead actor Jim Fletcher or a love letter to the white downtown theatrical avantgarde of the early 2000’s or maybe it’s my swan song to the one who got away. The performance follows a Board Member at the Shed who falls in love with a much younger commissioned artist named Nile. Running parallel to this is a fictive gesture of a jazz musician, inspired by the cornetist, Buddy Bolden, who was a New Orleans’ innovator of jazz at the turn of the 20th century until he went “mad” and spent the remainder of his life in a mental asylum. I’ll play the part of Buddy Bolden, I mean Nile, I mean Bolden and play the clarinet and tell you why I’ve gone mad. What did Solange say in the elevator? “There’s a lot to be mad about”. The black box theater can feel like a cage—I mean a stage. And sometimes these institutional invitations can feel like a trap. Why do I feel like I’m losing my mind? Maybe it’s because I love Him.
calendar
TEMPORARY BOYFRIEND
September 12-13 2025 | Serpentine Gallery London, United Kingdom
THIS HOUSE IS NOT A HOME
January 22-24, 2026 | McGuire Theater Minneapolis, Minnesota