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ARTISTIC STATEMENT

I am seduced by the shadows.

Theatre is excavation—an unearthing of what lives beneath politeness, beneath performance, beneath survival. I’m drawn to the grotesque, the shameful, the holy, the undone. Not to glorify darkness, but to sit inside it long enough to find its pulse. I believe the surreal gives us access to truths realism is too polite to hold.

My work ruptures form. Time bends. Space distorts. Saints sin. Monsters ache. I fracture the expected to expose what throbs underneath—grief, desire, inheritance, hunger. The stage becomes a liminal space where the sacred and profane share a body.

As a queer Black artist, my identities are not subjects—they are the soil. From that ground, I explore power, faith, lineage, and the architectures we were taught to live inside. That foundation allows me to move across narratives freely, shapeshifting while remaining rooted.

I build worlds that confront as much as they heal. Work that unsettles the body. Work that invites us to descend—so we can rise altered.

I make theatre that lingers in the dark until our eyes adjust.

© 2026 by James Mercer ii

Site Photos by Andrea Careaga
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