“A Crack of Light,” Suzanne Scott Constantine, 2017, mixed media on canvas, 30″ x 40″

“There is a Crack in Everything”: A Memoir of Our Quest to Find the Light Leaks was a collaborative multimedia performance exploring how people find hope during times of danger and displacement. The piece was inspired by the plight of refugees worldwide and by the physical dangers facing people of color, gender non-conforming people, and people fighting white supremacist movements in the US.

The part of the title in quotation marks is drawn from the best-known line in Leonard Cohen’s beloved 1992 song Anthem: “There is a crack, a crack in everything/That’s how the light gets in.”

Versions of the work were performed on November 2, 2017 at the Sixth International Symposium on Poetic Inquiry, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green OH; on November 11, 2017 at the Ollom Arts Festival in New York City; on December 9, 2017 at the Workhouse Arts Center, Lorton VA; and on March 27, 2018 for Women and Gender Studies at George Mason University, Fairfax VA.

For our performance at the Ollom Arts Festival, we were joined by New York singer-songwriter Danny Carmelo, who wrote and performed an original song based on our script and performed his own arrangement of Anthem. To learn more about Danny’s music, visit his Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/dannycarmelotorres

Click on any of the images below to see a larger version and learn more about the work.