The Supernatural Embodied Text: Creating Moj of the Antarctic with the Living and the Dead

Abstract

Moj of the Antarctic: An African Odyssey is a physical storytelling theatre piece for one performer with poetry, music, dance, audience interaction and visuals.¹ The play tells the odyssey of Moj, a woman who escapes slavery in the deep south of America by cross-dressing as a white man, travels to England, becomes a sailor on board a whaling ship bound for the southern ocean, and becomes the first African woman to step foot on Antarctica. The play is inspired by Ellen Craft, a mid-nineteenth-century African-American woman who in 1848 actually escaped slavery by cross-dressing as a white man.² Moj of the Antarctic is an intertextual fusion of Ellen’s real life boundary-breaking trans-gender, trans-racial, trans-geographical performance with the voices of almost 20 dead authors, as well as digital images and film of myself performing as ‘Moj’, shot on location on Antarctica by legendary Queer photographer and film-maker, Del LaGrace Volcano.