Nikki Davis

Nikki Davis an actor, historian, scholar, and wanderer. She researches and communes with the ghosts of feminine persons who were put to death for asserting various kinds of authority or bodily autonomy within patriarchal societies which deemed such assertions threatening and deserving of death. She is continuously evolving her performance practice, “Theatre of the Ghostly Feminine,” a practice of embodying feminine ghosts as a mode of historical storytelling, present-day reckoning, and alternative imagining.

Title of Project

Theatre of the Ghostly Feminine: A Pedagogical Offering in Five Apparitions

Description of Project

In this project, I outline the history, theoretical bases, and practice-based research methods for my performance practice, Theatre of the Ghostly Feminine. This practice is first and foremost a feminist project with political aspirations. It exists at the intersection of feminist theory, spectrality studies, and theatre studies. I created and continue to evolve this practice because I believe that theatre has the power to expose oppressive systems of power and provoke socio-political change. When we talk about the exposure of that which has been hidden by hegemonic forces, we are inevitably invoking the ghostly, that which is very present but not overtly seen or perceived. Ghosts are the natural enemies of the blinding hegemonic narrative of progress. The actor, as vessel and storyteller, has the ability to give temporary form and speech to immaterial beings. Through embodying the ghost, an actor can serve as a medium, reducing the distance between past and present injustices, conveying that such injustices are not over and done with but are still residually lingering or actively occurring.

Project Inspiration

PS introduced me to spectrality studies. I knew my prior performance work (Historical Female Solo Performance) always revolved around the ghost, but Western modernity had always kept me from using the lexicon of the ghost, kept me from the spectral, the spiritual, the immaterial. PS gave me the permission and the push to embrace what I knew about my work all along: that I had been working with ghosts, residually lingering presences constantly urging me to address the historical and ongoing social violences carried out against them.

Areas of Academic Interest

Theatre Studies, Spectrality Studies, Feminist Studies