Step onto the porch with us.

As we continue the celebration of the Community Artists' Collective's 40th anniversary through our retrospective 'Road to 40', we are intentionally producing programming that invites heritage preservationists, cultural thinkers, researchers, and artists right into the Collective to animate performance, literary, and sonic works that speak the communal evolutions across the diaspora.

​For this immersive activation, we’re tapping straight into the jazz-infused vernacular, the rhythm, and the rich idiom of our literary ancestors. We are gathering for an intimate, participatory group reading of Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life (1930) - the legendary collaboration by Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes. If you know anything about this play, you know the deep history and playful contention around how we resolve things within community.

​We're tracing the evolutionary line from rural roots to urban developments, honoring early Houston Black pasts like Mary Isaacs and the historic legacy of the Negro Little Theater. Participants will be handed scripts to annotate and read aloud together, transforming the porch into a portal for Black subjectivity, language, dialect, and storytelling.

​Expect deep dialogue, rhythmic storytelling, and the kind of synergy only a communal reading can spark. Light refreshments will be provided, and warm communal energy will bask the space. Be on the lookout as our new series unfolds with more artists, thinkers, and sonic disruptors engaging the themes of heritage preservation, ecology, kinship ties, and institutiona