Door Of No Return Info                                                                                                              Bookings

Contact us to bring Door Of No Return
to your Theatre, College, Conference or Performance Venue.

“… this is a play that transcends region.  This play should be seen across the country, to reveal a history that has nearly been forgotten.  I believe Door of No Return is a healing experience; just as the photograph of a black woman walking back through the door of the Diaspora challenges all the assumptions of forced erasure of culture and memory, the play itself brings people’s experiences to life.  This is not a dead history but a continuing dialogue with the past that will shape the present and the future.”
Jonathan Highfield, Associate Professor of Postcolonial Literatures, Rhode Island School of Design

Confirmed Presenters (click here)

Written & Performed by Nehassaiu deGannes
Musicians: Cathy Clasper-Torch & Nisha Purushotham
Directed by Kelli Wicke Davis
Dramatic solo-performance.  90 mins (no intermission).  Live musical accompaniment.
In this one-woman show, Nehassaiu deGannes gives voice to experiences of immigration, displacement, enslavement and resistance, from a brilliant multiplicity of perspectives by playing more than a dozen characters drawn from history, personal memory and present day interviews. Part docu-drama, part ritual theater, part mythic-extravaganza, Door Of No Return is full of surprises.  This play defies the segregation of American histories and invites us all to stand at the crossroads.
photo credit: donna maria bruton

Confirmed Presenters (click here)

Press & Audience  **********************************************************************

"Nehassaiu deGannes is tremendous.”  “At times, she’s from Jamaica, then Ghana, then Cape Verde, or Senegal.  Or else she’s a Native American, or a hyphenated modern American: Puerto Rican, Laotian, French, Irish, Scotch or Arabic.  She’s rich; she’s poor.  She’s young; she’s old.  She’s woman; she’s man…. But the reason you watch or listen… is for an emotional connection, which deGannes amply provides. ... storytelling, extended, animated and multifaceted”   Providence Journal
                
  "…breath taking!  It was brilliant and the entire school community is grateful…” 
   Tony Klemmer, Vice-Principal, Portsmouth Abbey

“Door of No Return is daring and subversive!” 
   Charlotte Meehan, Playwright-in-Residence, Wheaton College

Dear Mr. Estrella,
Artistic Director, The GAMM Theatre
 Please convey to Ms. de Gannes my compliments regarding Door of No Return.  I was in awe of the acting, emotions, staging, props,
EVERYTHING!!!  I attend the Gamm with a group of retired teachers and one of our group had seen Ms. de Gannes in some other production and insisted we see this one.  Not everyone came...boy, they have NO IDEA what they missed.  There are not enough words for how moving this performance was...nor can we adequately describe to those who did not attend how multi-talented Nehassiau is.  Thank you for sponsoring this production AND for all your terrific work with the Gamm's entire season...   Sincerely, Patricia Izzi

  ***********************************************************************     Bookings

Humanities Component

Door Of No Return is truly a convergence of the arts & humanities. Inspired by the solo-performance work of Danny Hoch, Roger Guenveur Smith and Guillermo Verdecchia, and carrying research, dreams & images from my January 2001 visit to Ghana and  Dr. Patricia Rubertone's Brown University course on the material culture of colonial New England, I bumped into Elmo Terry-Morgan, Artistic Director of Rites & Reason Theatre, one spring day on a Providence Trolley. In that brief ride from Kennedy Plaza to the East Side, he asked, "Have you ever wanted to create a one-woman show?" Yes! The wheel was set in motion.  In addition to a director, two musicians, visual artist and voice/dialect coach, I asked 3 Humanities Scholars to join our creative team. Dr. Patricia Rubertone, Dr. Tony Bogues, and independent historian & curator, Keith Stokes, each wrote an accompanying Humanities Essay.

With arts funding from RI Foundation, RI State Council for the Arts, New England Foundation for The Arts, City of Providence Mayor’s Office of Arts, Culture & Tourism, Brown University and Private Donations, we received from The RI Council on The Humanities, the first Script-Development Grant to be awarded to a non-documentary film project . This support enabled me to conduct present-day interviews with Rhode Islanders from all walks of life as well as research at The Rhode Island Black Heritage Society.