#  Life conjures art 

 





February 22, 2017

 

 

\[\[{"fid":"788816","view\_mode":"default","type":"media","attributes":{"height":"121","width":"122","style":"float: left;","alt":"Sharon Bridgforth","class":"media-element file-default"}}\]\]Create the life you want as an artist, says playwright Sharon Bridgforth. Then focus on the work. She will deliver a public lecture on Feb. 24 in Farkas Hall at Harvard.

By Samantha Neville ‘19

Playwright Sharon Bridgforth, who was born in Chicago, grew up in Los Angeles and is a self-described child of the [Great Migration](http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/great-migration), took the bus to school and other places she needed to go as a girl, and read while she did so.

“I was very inspired by books, so I think it was natural for me to want to write,” Bridgforth said. “When I was a teenager, I had so many emotions that I didn’t know what to do with, and in retrospect I can see that part of it was because I was gay, and I didn’t know that. I didn’t have a way to understand that.”

Writing helped.

\[\[{"fid":"788821","view\_mode":"default","type":"media","attributes":{"height":"267","width":"401","style":"float: right;","alt":"Sharon Bridgforth","class":"media-element file-default"}}\]\]As a [Learning From Performers](/lfp) visiting artist, Bridgforth will talk about her evolution as a writer and artist during [a lecture](/event/playwright-sharon-bridgforth) 4 p.m. Feb. 24 at Farkas Hall. The event is free and open to the public. While she’s at Harvard this week, she will also teach a master class to the cast and creative team of a Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club[ production](http://hrdctheater.com/loveconjureblues/) in April of [*love conjure/blues*](http://www.redbonepress.com/products/love-conjure-blues-by-sharon-bridgforth), a theatrical adaptation of her novel of the same name.

Before she worked as a writer and theater artist, Bridgforth was a community organizer, a director of the call-in radio show, an intervention counselor for Austin/Travis County Health and Human Services, and a family planning counselor for Planned Parenthood.

“I approach the art like a community organizer, like somebody that is using art as a vehicle for social justice,” said Bridgforth, who won both a [Doris Duke Artist Award](http://ddpaa.org/artist/sharon-bridgforth/) (in theater) and a [Creative Capital](https://creative-capital.org/grantees/view/799/project:864) Award last year.

It comes as no surprise that Bridgforth emphasizes the hard work that has gone into her success.

“It has been extremely difficult,” Bridgforth said. “It’s been a lot of work. It has also been an absolute joy and privilege.”

\[\[{"fid":"788826","view\_mode":"default","type":"media","attributes":{"height":"186","width":"133","style":"float: left;","alt":"love conjure/blues","class":"media-element file-default"}}\]\]Central to her success, she said, was finding a group of people she could practice her art with. Because her work is part of a [theatrical jazz aesthetic](https://ohiostatepress.org/books/Book%20Pages/jones-jazz.html), ensemble is elemental to creating jazz-like improvisation and polyrhythm in theater. In *love conjure/blues*, she uses theatrical jazz on the page to explore gender and her own history as a product of the Great Migration.

“With all of my work my intention is to use African-American tradition ­– acquired experience and culture – to celebrate our history and our lives and to bring people from very, very different backgrounds together for hopefully transformative experience where we connect and see each other a little more fully,” Bridgforth said.

Her advice to student artists is simple.

“Focus on the work, build \[an\] artistic family and know that you are creating a life,” she said. “Create the life that you want to live. And the art and the life are not separate.”