“Kudzu” Wraps Your Head Around Charlotte’s Creeping Housing Crisis

By Tim Miner

“Kudzu: A Story of Belonging” Opens Aug. 22 at QC Family Tree

Kat Martin is at it again, inviting audiences to lose themselves mentally and physically in a dramatic performance.

Over the past several years, Martin and her company, Mixed Metaphor Productions (MMP), have established themselves as leaders in Charlotte’s performance community. MMP stages original productions that explore hyper-local public issues through “art installations, new oral histories, immersive theatre and rad parties,” according to their Linktree page.

GETTING TANGLED UP IN THE PROCESS

MMP develops projects that pull audiences into their shows and surround them with the narrative. In 2021, their show “Fixaplate” explored Southern gentrification by combining an outdoor picnic for audiences with a staged performance. In 2023, “Swimcap” asked audiences to confront myths that Black people don’t like swimming through a combination of dance and aerial performance.

Now, “Kudzu: A Story of Belonging” is challenging audiences to confront what it means to call Charlotte home and delve into housing justice and the essence of community through the lens of an open house. The intimate setting is designed to blur the lines between audience and participant, creating a unique, immersive experience.

“Kudzu” cast member, Teresa Long

WALKING THROUGH DAILY REALITIES

“In this show, we’re imagining the future by exploring the nuances of the present housing crisis,” says Kat Martin, founder of MMP. “What assumptions do we have about Charlotte? In a time when 113 people move to Charlotte every day and 55 Charlotteans are evicted daily, what myths do we want to believe?”

During the 55-minute performance, audience members will walk through an Enderly Park home and encounter characters like “The Person Packing,” who has 90 days to vacate their current residence. This character represents the increase in eviction rates.

“You are dropped into the story as one of our characters. ‘Jessica Taylor, Real Estate Tycoon,’ guides you through an open house,” said Martin. “You’ll be welcomed into an immersive installation that entwines the different historical factors – like redlining laws and urban renewal – that create the realities we live in.”

The cast features Sunnee Goodwin, Cecilia McNeill, and Teresa Long, with live performances of the original score by music director Liza Ortiz.

“Kudzu” cast member, Cecilia McNeill

HEAR MORE FROM THE DIRECTOR

To help us understand the story behind the story, we reached out to Martin for greater insight into how the seeds of “Kudzu” were sown.

What inspired this show? Why now?

As a born-and-bred Charlottean, I have seen this city grow and change. There are parts of Charlotte I have known my entire life that I don’t recognize anymore. All these changes and “progress” are happening at a time when 113 people move here every day, eviction filings are up 36%, and a quarter of Charlotte homes are investor-owned. This led our team to ask: “Who is Charlotte for? Who belongs here? What does it mean to call Charlotte home?”

There are many born-and-bred Charlotteans on our team, and we all live in a duality of looking nostalgically to Charlotte’s past to help us understand Charlotte’s present while we worry about its future. We knew we needed to talk about housing now because – for a few folks on our team – housing insecurity is more than an issue or concept. This is a lived experience.

You create vibrant, immersive experiences for your audiences. How do you hope that “Kudzu” makes audiences feel?

Connected and empowered. We hope that people feel connected to each other, to Charlotte, and to the part they play in the story of housing here. We hope that folks feel empowered to dig deeper into the stories being told about Charlotte. Audiences will feel connected to each other, and they may have a deeper understanding of our city.

We want to push back on narratives and policies that erase Charlotteans. We hope by connecting us to each other, our shared sense of place, and our common emotions, we can empower each other to create a more just future.

What did working with QC Family Tree add to the process?

QC Family Tree has been working in the Enderly Park neighborhood for over 20 years, actively cultivating the common good and providing affordable housing while resourcing artists as justice workers.

A major goal of our work is to activate change – part of the way we do that is by donating 40% of our ticket sales to our community collaborator. That’s why we wanted to work with QC Family Tree to support their work.

Their generosity and creative vision allowed us to work in residence in QC Family Tree’s Big Blue House all summer long, allowing us to connect deeply to the community and elevate our work by building, rehearsing, and performing in the same space.