Religion at Nellie Mae Rowe's Playhouse

This paper considers both the material and textual-archival legacy of Nellie Mae Rowe. Examining Rowe’s references to Africana religions, her ideologies of motherhood and childhood; and her apocalyptic and visionary theories, I argue that the artist conceived of her artistic practice and playhouse as a ministry and a sanctuary respectively. Through close readings of several pieces from Rowe’s canon of work as well as extant oral histories, I demonstrate how Rowe utilized acts of religious creation to invite audiences into practices of improvisation, play, and imagination amid the ongoing social realities facing rural Black Southerners in the late twentieth century, such as gentrification, segregation, white supremacist violence, and poverty.