Defiance! Art and Life

Following her initial dramatic reading of Nancy Elizabeth Prophet’s Paris diary at RISD Museum in 2014 and at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 2015, Sylvia Ann Soares created and performed sixteen versions of solos in her Defiance! series on Prophet. In Defiance! Art and Life Soares again visits primary sources to re-explore aspects and chapters of Prophet’s life. Here, months before her passing, a wiser, yet impassioned Prophet emotionally recalls struggles and successes of her career and choices. Throughout her fiscal, physical and artistic challenges, Prophet defiantly pursued her drive to sculpt. Likewise, Prophet’s affiliation with W.E.B. DuBois, teaching at Spelman College, recipient of racial misrepresentation, and her poetry and essay on “Art and Life” invoked Soares’ conceivable choices Prophet expounds on her philosophy of art and life.

Sylvia Ann Soares, 82, theatre artist, activist. Community College of Rhode Island ’93; Brown University ’95. Actors Equity; SAG-AFTRA. Soares has performed overseas, in major regional theatres, on national tours and in 70s television series. Since 2014, she read Prophet’s diary for Brooklyn Museum of Art in 2015 and has performed versions of her Defiance! series as Nancy Elizabeth Prophet twenty times. Local presentations included RISD Museum, Trinity Repertory Company, Newport Art Museum, The Wilbury Theatre Group, RI Black Storytellers, AS220, RI Historical Society, Community Libraries, and East Providence City Hall.