Corey Smith and Rachel Lindsay reflect on THICK: a crumbling freak show, by Jenn Freeman | Po’Chop that was a part of the Chicago Solo Spotlight Festival in the spring of 2025 in Sixty Inches from Center, musing: “They say you are what you eat. Does how you eat what you eat matter too?” They go on to write:
What is THICK? Perhaps: an architecture, a construction with crevasses, corners and caryatids of Black women; perhaps: a freak show in reverse, a funhouse mirror, a ritual for not forgetting.
We walk into the theater through the stage door. There are chairs and floor cushions placed directly on the stage and a crumbling circus tent suspended from the ceiling and a circular platform at the stage’s center. Meditative sounds play while we settle and Jenn Freeman | Po’Chop enters. They perform a quiet ceremony with vessels of water. It’s not a moment that pulls attention, but rather lets the performance start with a whisper.
Like a seance, we watch as a secret space of held remnants—breath, prayers, fingerprints, and time—is conjured onto water, memory, glass and Freeman | Po’Chop. Like the lifting of fog—when the water’s edge is just becoming clear, it was at this moment we all knew THICK was starting, that is, if it hadn’t already started, long ago.
The next hour or so of performance is a tour de force of Freeman | Po’Chop’s chops. They easefully move and speak urgently. They twerk and shake. They glide from drag to performance art to dance and back. In one striking moment, they lip-sync a genocidal set of instructions on how to co-opt and erase a language. Just before, we watch their shadow change clothes, silhouetted against the white and red curtain of the circus tent…
Read the whole reivew.
Image above: Jenn Freeman | Po'Chop is shown hunched and facing towards the audience under purple lighting. The words “when flesh and body collide?”, is projected behind her, across the stage in blue hand-written text on a black background. Photo by William Frederking.
