Fly away

Credits: Dorothy James, Rowan Magee, Andy Manjuck, Jon Riddleberger, Emma Wiseman, Hassan Anderson, Stuart Breczinski, Danni Pascuma, John Aylward, Caren Celine Morris, Marika Kent, Christopher Darbassie, Seth Kelly, Joseph Lymous, Rebecca Zammito, Maggie Ellis, and Pablo Diaz.
Visuals: © Derek Fordjour and Nick Lehane, All Rights Reserved.
Music: © 2020 Hassan Anderson, John Aylward, All Rights Reserved.

Interdisciplinary artist Derek Fordjour made a stirring foray into film in 2020 with 'Fly away'. Documenting a puppet performance co-created with puppeteer and theatre artist Nick Lehane and originally presented at Petzel Gallery, New York, 'Fly away' weaves through the heaviest of themes with the lightest touch, creating a mounting sense of wonderment and historical resonance along the way. The star of the show is a humble wooden puppet, a Black ‘everyman’ sculpted by Robert Maldonado, which is led by a troupe of extraordinary puppeteers through episodes of loss, transcendence, labour, play, competition, intimacy and jubilation. Beginning with his emergence from a coffin that also recalls the hold of a slave ship, and then proceeding through his endeavours as a football player, jockey and musician, the puppet figure is controlled, in a careful casting decision, by white puppeteers, suggesting that, even when their guidance is kind, true freedom for this figure is hard, if not impossible, to attain. The result is a fable-like performance which, by evoking moments of crisis and celebration in one man’s history, connects powerfully with present-day losses and struggles.