photos 1+3: Alex Munro | photo 2: Maria Baranova

With the help of a gingerbread minstrel and a duo of Dimes Square vape addicts, Nile Harris leads a raucous ensemble of instigators towards an insurrection of a bounce house to ask: why “you niggas in trouble”?

Nile Harris’s this house is not a home returns to Abrons Arts Center after its celebrated sold out run this past summer. The experimental play is an assemblage of embodied expressions. The artist turns to performance lecture, minstrelsy, and dance to intervene on the tradition of theater and narrate incisive cultural critiques inspired by collaborations with his close friend, the late interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker Trevor Bazile (born Miami, FL, 1996-2021). For Harris, the vapid and at times, comedic absurdity of liberalism haunts the present day. A bounce castle, saturated in saccharine reds and yellows, evocative of childhood play, represents instead the sinister monuments that come and go in the wake of contemporary social and political catastrophe: a besieged U.S capital, a “well-intentioned” arts institution, and the insidious allyship of white liberal America, all come crumbling down. Harris, with collaborators Crackhead Barney and Malcom-x Betts is astute in churning the wheels of discomfort as he asks the following figuratively and literally: What does it mean to be an American today? Will the revolution have 501c3 status? And most importantly, why “you niggas in trouble?”