Theather alumna Jillian Walker ’17 presents The Whitney Album at the Soho Rep Theatre in New York City. This piece, characterized as a "ritual performance,” honors Whitney Houston and other influential Black women artists who were "beloved and consumed for their art." Previews are set to run until the production's opening night on June 6, 2023, with the final performance scheduled for July 2. Tickets are available here.
The Whitney Album, focusing on Walker’s relationship with Whitney Houston’s work and personal life, blends elements of music, history, and culture. Walker, who is well known for her musical dramaturgy and her growing body of theatrical innovation, has curated an album of songs as part of the theatrical piece, melding them with a narrative that explores and unravels themes of identity, resilience, and artistic legacy.
Walker will star in the cast alongside Portia (STEW, To Kill a Mockingbird), Stephanie Weeks (The Coast Starlight), and Ben Jalosa Williams (Baldwin and Buckley at Cambridge). The production’s director is Jenny Koon (Regretfully, So the Birds Are).
"Initially, this work began as a contemplation of my personal relationship with Whitney Houston, but it has since evolved to encapsulate the collective 'we,'" Walker said. "I approached this piece through my own perceived exit wounds, feeling affected by impressions of Whitney and even the title The Voice, particularly as a Black woman performer myself. However, the writing has transcended beyond these initial impressions. Whitney's voice is a spiritual experience for many of us. So, what does it mean to embrace both these aspects, and how do they coexist in one piece? Moreover, how does the individual 'I' transform into the collective, and how does Whitney Houston herself exemplify this?"
The Whitney Album is another step in Walker’s relationship with Soho Rep, where she became one of eight artists in the 2020-21 cohort of Soho Rep's Project Number One, through which theatre makers are given staff positions. During that period, Walker developed The Orange Essays, which she presented on Instagram Live in the summer of 2021.
Jillian Walker is a multidimensional artist, performer, trailblazer and teacher, masterfully weaving together previously-uncharted paths in the field of performance, theater, dramatic storytelling and in the realm of ancestral healing practice as a devoted shamanic student of the afro-indigenous tradition of Ubungoma. Her work breathes with, as, and through a dynamic process of bridging the gap between the ancestral/spiritual, the archival, the dramaturgical, and the performative, and the artistic practice of life as a divination.
