"every.single.one":

This piece is a finalist for the 2023 Jane Chambers Award in Feminist Playwriting and Performance Texts

A solo performance by intermedia artist, Cherie Sampson that depicts personal, familial and community experiences with hereditary cancer while exploring topics of genetics, integrative oncology, and healing from a patient’s perspective of modern medicine. Constructed from lived experience, field notes, documentary A/V material, interviews, and scientific information, “every.single.one” is a dramatic interpretation of a universal human reality that explores the body as a site of uncertainty in illness and survival. The performance interweaves three levels of testimonial – the artist’s, her sister’s, and those of other hereditary cancer survivors and previvors.

This is a “theatrical workshop” version of the performance, which is currently a work-in-process. There will be a talkback after the performance with the artist and panel members on topics related to integrative oncology, arts & healing and hereditary cancer. The open discussion will provide the audience an informal opportunity to engage the work by asking questions and sharing their responses and insights in the process of the further development of the piece. (Full production debut of the performance will be late 2024).

For more information about the performance, contact Sara Khambalia at sara@smithcenter.org

The performance is part of the programming accompanying Sampson’s solo exhibition, “Art, Cancer & Transformation” at the Joan Hisaoka Gallery, Smith Center for Healing & the Arts, 1632 U Street, NW, Washington, DC from June 2 – July 31, 2023.

We strongly encourage registrants to experience the art exhibition prior to the performance. 

Cherie Sampson has worked for thirty years as an interdisciplinary artist in environmental performance, sculpture, video art and dance, presenting her work internationally in art-in-nature symposia and in-situ performances (including a piece attended by the Dutch Queen in 2003), film & video screenings and art exhibitions. She is a Professor in the School of Visual Studies at the University of Missouri and the recipient of many grants including two Fulbright Grants (1998 & 2011), a Finnish Cultural Foundation Grant and multiple university research grants. In 2018, the Pori Museum of Art in Pori, Finland acquired photographic and video documentation of her installations and performances created over a 20-year period in Finland for their permanent collection. She received her MFA degree in Intermedia & Video Art from the University of Iowa in 1997. In addition to her creative work, Sampson serves as a patient advocate in several organizations: the Society for Integrative Oncology (SIO), Facing Our Risk Empowered (FORCE) and the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program (BCRP).