Workshop: Performance for Writers, Writing for Performance with Fargo Nissim Tbakhi
Workshop: Performance for Writers, Writing for Performance with Fargo Nissim Tbakhi
3 Sessions: July 6, 8, 10
5:00-7:00pm ET
Fargo Nissim Tbakhi
Fargo Nissim Tbakhi is a Palestinian performance artist, poet, and writer of criticism and short fiction. His performances have been programmed at the Arab-American National Museum, the Whitney's Independent Study Program, the Poetry Project at St Marks, Cannonball Festival, Mosaic Theater, the Abrons Art Center, the DC Palestinian Film and Art Festival, OUTsider Fest, and elsewhere, and has received support from the MAP Fund, the National Performance Network, and others. His debut poetry collection, Terror Counter, was published by Deep Vellum in 2025 and was longlisted for the National Book Award. He has taught in the theater department at Towson University, and lectured or offered guest workshops at a variety of educational institutions both formal and informal.
The art of performance is often expected of writers, and seldom taught to us. If it is, the performance is subservient to the writing it interprets, with little consideration of the mutual, enlightening relationship between performance and text. Performance, as a rich and slippery artistic form, can do things that writing itself cannot, and vice versa; this workshop will offer a set of tools to surface and invest in this form, considering performance as a set of tools which can enrich and enliven our writing practice both on and off the page. Over three sessions, participants will be introduced to a range of performance elements and learn how to integrate them into a writing practice holistically and intentionally.
We'll begin by analyzing and unpacking a range of performance elements (time/duration, body, sound, space, object, etc), using examples from notable writer-performers. We'll then experiment with surfacing these elements in a piece of writing from each participant, seeing how performance illuminates, challenges, subverts, or clarifies the intentions and strategies of the writing. Finally, we'll share and exchange feedback on our performance experiments.
Workshop Highlights:
For anyone just beginning to explore performance, this workshop will offer a clear and accessible framework to experiment and play freely, with clear examples and language.
For those looking to deepen their relationship to performance, the workshop's structure will offer a way to scaffold towards more sophisticated engagement and application of performance theory and practice.
For anyone and everyone, the discussion and exploration of the mutual relationship between performance and text will offer a broadly useful way to analyze, interpret, and create art that is strange, experimental, and meaningful.
This class has 5 scholarship available. To apply, please fill out this form by Friday, June 26.
Fargo Nissim Tbakhi is a Palestinian performance artist and writer. His debut poetry collection, Terror Counter (Deep Vellum, 2025) was longlisted for the National Book Award. His next book, Antigone.Velocity. Salt., is forthcoming from Deep Vellum in 2027.
His writing has been published and anthologized widely, including in Mizna, Foglifter, the Academy of American Poets, the Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, Strange Horizons, Protean, and elsewhere. His performance and installation work has been featured at the Center for Performance Research, Cannonball Festival, OUTsider Fest, Rhizome DC, the DC Palestinian Film and Arts Festival, the Washington Project for the Arts, Amherst College, Arizona State University, the Abrons Art Center, and elsewhere. He has received fellowships and support from Hamiltonian Artists, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the Poetry Project at St. Marks, the Arab-American National Museum, the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands, and elsewhere. He has taught in the Theater Department at Towson University, and has given lectures or workshops at a variety of institutional and independent educational forums.
His performance project in collaboration with George Abraham, EVE, received support from the National Performance Network and the MAP Fund, and will premiere in 2026 in partnership with the Arab American National Museum, Mizna, and Silk Road Cultural Center. With Mojdeh Rezaiepour, he is developing the Collaborative Fragment Library, a counter-institutional infrastructure for artists and communities to work with fragments of ancient heritage objects.
