Walking with My Ancestors: Cape Coast Castle will premiere at the Bloomington Center for Performing Arts at 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, September 21.

The award-winning and nationally recognized performance art piece Walking with My Ancestors: Cape Coast Castle (2019) is a story that takes the audience through a ritual journey that includes live drumming, storytelling, song, dance, and drama and leads to revelation, reconciliation, and rebirth. The performance is appropriate for all ages, and children are welcome.

“This is not the performance we saw in 2014-2016 with a group of women and a gentleman,” said Illinois State University’s Professor of Ethnomusicology Ama Oforiwaa Aduonum, who researched, wrote, and choreographed the piece. “This is a never-before seen show , a one-woman performance about triumph over adversity, hope, resilience, emotional justice, love, and survival.”

Walking with My Ancestors: Cape Coast Castle (2019) is based on the totality of ethnographic field research in former dungeons for enslaved Africans at Cape Coast, Ghana in 2016-2017. The play is directed by Professor of Theatre Kim Pereira and produced by Bloomington’s Coalescence Theatre Project under the direction of alumnus Don Shandrow ’76.

The performance is open to the public and is appropriate for the entire family, including children.

Tickets can be purchased at Bloomington Center for Performing Arts or by calling (309) 434-2777.