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How Do We Keep Secret(s) in Public?

September 20 @ 6:00 pm - 10:00 pm

- Free

Organized by Jacquelyn Marie Shannon and inspired by anthropologist Michael Taussig’s framing of magic as “a skilled revelation of skilled concealment,” this immersive event explores secrecy as a social practice. Drawing on research with occult communities, the event features artist-practitioners who employ relational forms of concealment, including magicians, mediums, witches, hypnotists, death doulas, sex workers, dream workers, and more. Across two floors, participants are invited to rehearse secrecy as a shared skill, a means of building trust, sustaining connection, and preparing for moments that demand hiding, signaling, and collective commitment.

Tickets & Timed Entry:
Tickets are free, but capacity is very limited. Please only reserve a ticket if you are able to commit to attending. (If your plans change, please cancel your ticket so it can be released to someone else.)

There are two timed entry sessions: 6 PM and 8 PM. Each ticket grants access to one 1 hour and 45 minute experience window. During your session, you are invited to roam freely across two floors, discovering performances, installations, and intimate encounters with 15+ featured artist-practitioners.

There is no single path through the event, and not every experience will be encountered by every one. Your path through secrecy will be your own. Arrive promptly for your selected entry time and trust that you’ll find what you’re meant to find.

To RSVP, visit the event page on Eventbrite and select your preferred entry time.

Featuring:
Abou Farman
Antra Kalnis Borofsky
Daniella Caggiano – www.daniellacaggiano.com / @dfcaggiano
Esme Providence Brown – @esmeprovidence
Hayden Childress – www.haydenismagic.com
Katherine Borkov – www.everythingspills.studio / @everything.spills
Kay Turner (she/her) – IG @kay__turner / FB @kay.turner.3701
Kelvin Daly
Lilith Dorsey – lilithdorsey.com / IG @lilithdorsey / FB @lilithdorseyauthor
Liza Fenster – @crow.mother.channeling
Madazon Can-Can – www.madazoncancan.com / @madazon_can_can
Miss Harissa – @miss.harissa
Orpheus (she/they)
Seeress MuggaRose
Tara Desouza – www.taratherapeuticcoaching.com / @desouza.tara
The Winter’s Doe – www.thewintersdoe.com / @thewintersdoe
The Wizard Devin Person – www.personisawake.com / @personisawake

Content & Age Guidance:
This event is intended for mature audiences. Individual works and encounters may engage with themes including sexuality and eroticism, death and violence, religion and spirituality, the occult, and other potentially sensitive subject matter. Some experiences may include suggestive content or moments of intensity.
Young people are welcome at the discretion of a parent or guardian; we encourage adults to consider the nature of the event when deciding whether it is appropriate for younger attendees.

Sensory & Participation Notes:
This is a roaming event featuring intimate, participatory, and installation-based works. Some experiences may invite direct interaction with performers, and some artists may invite consensual touch or physical contact. You are always welcome to decline an interaction or leave an experience at any time.

Accessibility:
Green Lung Studio is located across two levels and is not wheelchair accessible. Entry to the venue requires the use of stairs, and an additional staircase connects the two levels of the event. Because this is a roaming event, guests may move throughout the space and between floors during their visit. Limited seating will be available throughout the space.
If you have specific accessibility questions or would like more information about the physical or sensory experience of the event, please contact Jacquelyn at jacquelyn.spcuny@gmail.com.

 

Bios

Organizer bio:
Jacquelyn Marie Shannon is a ritual artist, occult scholar-educator, and PhD candidate in Theatre and Performance at The Graduate Center, CUNY in New York City whose work explores dramaturgies of magic, witchcraft, haunting, and the supernatural. She is especially interested in ritual and artistic processes that engage spirit(s), alternative temporalities, liminal and altered states, synesthesia, hypnosis, visions and dreams.

Jacquelyn has performed, presented research, taught, designed and facilitated ritual experiences across the US and internationally, heavily informed by 20+ years of training in Japanese butoh, expressionist dance, physical and psychodramatic theatre, ritual practice, and contemporary performance. Her dissertation research investigates the relationship between theatricality, embodied technique, and ritual efficacy towards producing experiences of magic and transformation in The Witch’s Dance. Jacquelyn holds an MA from Indiana University in Communication and Culture (2011), an MA from New York University in Educational Theatre (2014), and an MPhil from CUNY Graduate Center in Theatre and Performance (2023). Her writing appears in published articles and edited volumes, including The Witch Studies Reader (Duke University Press, 2025) and The Routledge Companion to Butoh Performance (2020). Jacquelyn (not-so-secretly) weaves her research and practice into every event she produces, taking exquisite care to craft collective experiences that genuinely affect those who take part and leave them a little haunted.
https://jacquelynmarieshannon.com/

 

Individual Artist-Practitioner Bios:

Kay Turner (she/her) 

IG @kay__turner /  FB @kay.turner.3701

Kay Turner (she/her) is an artist and scholar working across disciplines including performance, writing, music, and folklore. Her current performance and writing project, ongoing since 2012, is called What A Witch. Performing various aspects of the witch figure in folklore and history, her practice is centered in unmaking and reversing the damages done by demonizing the witch. Recent performances include: “A Hekate Supper: Redemption through Decay,” (Staten Island Museum of Art, 2026); “Aphrodite’s Mirror/Hekate’s Reflection” (SVA Project Space, 2026); “Frau Trude: The Musical” (Dyke Art House, Philadelphia, 2025); “Double Sun” with Elizabeth Insogna (Bill Arning Exhibitions, Kinderhook, NY, 2024);“A Hekate Supper, Parts I and II, Abjection and Ecstasy” (Five Myles Gallery, NYC, 2022); “Healing Persephone’s Wounds,” with Elizabeth Insogna (National Arts Club, NYC, 2021); and ”Muses of Malta: Witch, Goddess, Madonna” (Fragmenta Contemporary, Valletta, 2018); Her books include Beautiful Necessity: The Art and Meaning of Women’s Altars and Transgressive Tales: Queering the Grimms. Turner holds a PhD in folklore and anthropology from the University of Texas, Austin. She was adjunct Visiting Professor in the Performance Studies Department at NYU from 2002-2022.  

 

Lilith Dorsey 

lilithdorsey.com / IG @lilithdorsey / FB @lilithdorseyauthor

Lilith Dorsey M.F.A. , hails from many magickal traditions, including Celtic, Afro-Caribbean, and Native American spirituality. Their traditional education focused on Anthropology and Film at the University of R.I, New York University and the University of London, and their magickal training includes numerous initiations in Santeria also known as Lucumi, Haitian Vodoun, and New Orleans Voodoo.  Lilith Dorsey is the filmmaker of the experimental documentary Bodies of Water :Voodoo Identity and Tranceformation, the proud Black author of the bestselling Orishas, Goddesses and Voodoo Queens and 5 other titles, Voodoo PriestX of the New Orleans based House of Maman Brigitte,  as well as choreographer for jazz legend Dr. John’s “Night Tripper” Voodoo Show.  Spirit, soul and identity are often seen in an unusual and shocking way and this is what their work strives to artfully display. 

 

Esme Providence Brown 

@esmeprovidence

Esme Providence Brown is a multidisciplinary practitioner working across performance, cultural criticism, patient advocacy, and somatic practice, based in Brooklyn. She holds an MFA from Temple University and is completing an MA in Costume Studies at NYU. Her lecture-performance Dressing for Authority: A Cultural Hallucination was presented at FCVC in 2025. She is a Fulbright scholar (Indonesia 2022) and a correspondent for the Conspirituality podcast. Studio EPB, the multidisciplinary practice she ran from Metropolitan Avenue in Brooklyn, closed in early 2026.

 

Abou Farman

An anthropologist, writer and artist, Abou Farman is author of On Not Dying: Secular Immortality in the Age of Technoscience, Clerks of the Passage and No Silence in the Afterlife. He is co-founder of Art Space Sanctuary, Casa Ojala and the Shipibo Conibo Center of NY.

 

Liza Fenster 

@crow.mother.channeling

Liza Fenster (she/her) is a professional medium and tarot reader. She also serves an Ordained minister, Reiki Master Teacher and Community Steward. There are places in every timeline and generation that stand present to be witness to what you carry within. Within those quiet walls, in every space and time, sits a person present and prepared to consume this. I am here with you now, to receive what you no longer want to bear alone.  I am here to alchemize the DNA of these  secrets into a powerful catalyst. 

 

Madazon Can-Can 

www.madazoncancan.com / @madazon_can_can

Madazon Can-Can, M.Ed (SLC), is a multi-media artist specializing in clown, burlesque, drag and spends their spare time as a Professional Dominatrix in Utah. They are constantly inspired by the way in which humans connect and disconnect. The influence of nature vs. nurture on an environment and its creatures is a never-ending fascination for them. As an ex-Mormon and survivor of a cult, they do indeed walk many miles of grief, witnessing the cruelty of mankind. Through their study of their own honeybee hives, Madazon has created the Lulla-Beez offering to awaken the inner child, the one who doesn’t question if connection exists, but seeks only sweetness in an exposed and often difficult world. Danger and intimacy often walk hand in hand as yellow and black on the bee.

 

Hayden Childress  

www.haydenismagic.com 

A very honest liar.

Hayden Childress is based in New York City and is the creator and sole performer of Urban Illusions, a 20-seat close up magic show running every weekend in the East Village of Manhattan. The show runs off of word of mouth and has garnered a cult following. Hayden sees magic as an artistic medium and not just a puzzle. His influence in magic comes from outsider perspectives on performance and a background shaped by indie music, analog art, and an obsession with cultural gaps between perception and reality. His work has been covered by Bloomberg and Timeout New York, and has appeared on Penn & Teller: Fool Us on the CW network. 

 

Orpheus (she/they)

orpheus (aka Scout Rainer Wiley) (they/zie) is an Asheville-based poet, writer, and renegade alchemist whose work explores the relationship between the somatic, the imaginal, and the mysteries of nature. By weaving together threads of religious studies, systems theory, and somatics, they seek to inspire systems change and liberation for humanity through creative ritual expression.

 

Seeress MuggaRose

Since 1988, MuggaRose has studied esoteric arts, offering psychic and evidential services nationwide for over 20 years. She helps individuals navigate grief, gain clarity, and support unsolved cases. She authored the grimoire chapbook Sundries for the Soul, with Ghost of the Unresolved Past, a memoir and mediumship guide, forthcoming.

MuggaRose (Cheyanne Disé) has spent a lifetime navigating the space between the seen and unseen. From childhood, she experienced perceptions beyond ordinary awareness, leading her on a grounded path of spiritual exploration. Her work is rooted in the unseen through her roles as a doll artist, ceremonialist, apparition photographer, ghost historian at Pike Place Market, and active Spiritualist. She has been invited as an Artist in Residence at Lily Dale, New York, for the past two summers and continues to hold Practitioner Residencies across the country in apothecaries, community centers, and private spaces, offering workshops, evidential mediumship, book talks, and spiritual services. She has also been a featured guest on radio shows, podcasts, and live audience events. Her home bases span San Francisco, Seattle, New Orleans, and New York’s Hudson Valley. Simply put, she is a mother, a Spiritualist, a facilitator, and a practitioner devoted to healing, connection, and service.

 

Miss Harissa  

@miss.harissa

Miss Harissa is an immersive experience designer, rope artist, and NYC dominatrix. She explores world building, ritual, and participatory experiences to create spaces where play, presence, and trust can unfold. 

 

The Wizard Devin Person 

www.personisawake.com / @personisawake

Devin Person lives his life as an unfolding answer to the question, “What would a wizard do?” So far, he’s doing his best to put the mystery back in magic and look good in a pointy hat.

 

Katherine Borkov 

www.everythingspills.studio  / @everything.spills

Katya Borkov is a poet, jewish mystic, and portal maker knocking on the door and writing the way in.

 

Tara Desouza 

www.taratherapeuticcoaching.com / @desouza.tara 

Tara Desouza is a trauma-informed therapeutic coach and certified hypnotherapist specializing in helping people create lasting emotional change. Her work integrates Hypnotherapy, Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), Time Line Therapy®, and therapeutic coaching to help people understand how unconscious patterns influence thoughts, emotions, and behavior. With years of experience facilitating personal transformation, Tara creates a safe environment to explore your issues, identify solutions, heal and pursue the life you want and deserve to live.

 

Daniella Caggiano 

www.daniellacaggiano.com / @dfcaggiano

Daniella Caggiano (she/they) is a queer disabled director, intimacy director, and proud native New Yorker.  She is committed to radically centering queer and femme voices on stage and screen. Their directing challenges traditional power structures and explores taboo topics, inviting audiences to sit with discomfort and welcome empathetic vulnerability. Daniella draws inspiration from a long line of gutsy theatremakers including Sarah Kane, Caryl Churchill, The Five Lesbian Brothers, Brecht, and Holly Hughes. As an Intimacy Director, Daniella believes in healing the industry through choreography and consent education. She brings a queer, feminist perspective to this work. She believes that a trauma-informed approach to handling onstage intimacy is essential to creating a safe working environment where performers are confident to take risks and do their most daring work. 

Daniella holds an MFA from The New School and a BA from Sarah Lawrence College. She lives in Brooklyn with her wife and rescue dog. ​In their spare time, Daniella can be found going to punk shows and training as a Death Doula.

 

Kelvin Daly

Kelvin Daly is a musician, ritualist, and builder of musical and ritual instruments and situations. He specializes in performances in unusual or otherwise inaccessible spaces, and often lives to work in collaboration with other performers, dancers, poets or theatre in creating mysterious experiential situations.

 

The Winter’s Doe 

www.thewintersdoe.com / @thewintersdoe

The Winter’s Doe brings whimsy into the world beyond expected boundaries. She hails from the fae realm isle of Hy-Brasil, though now she walks among the skyscrapers. While her heart is made of ice, it is your heart she seeks to delight. She has been crafting one-on-one immersive experiences for three years and creating communal rituals for witches for over two decades. Learn more at Calluna, located at callunaembassy.com

 

Antra Kalnis Borofsky

Antra Borofsky is a couples therapist, retreat leader, Zen practitioner, and movement artist whose work explores relational presence, embodied memory, grief, tenderness, and the mystery of being seen. Born in a displaced persons camp after World War II to a Latvian family shaped by occupation, exile, emigration, and survival, she carries an enduring interest in what the body remembers and what cannot—or need not—be fully spoken.  Her movement practice has been influenced by Butoh, contemplative stillness, improvisation, and the natural world. She creates dances and video works in intimate relationship with music, place, and personal history, often collaborating with her husband, Richard Borofsky, who films her work. She divides her time between Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Great Duck Island, Maine, where wind, ocean, fog, and changing light continually enter her creative practice.

Details

Organizers

  • SPCUNY
  • Jacquelyn Marie Shannon

Venue

  • Green Lung Studio
  • 22 Commerce Street
    Brooklyn, NY 11231 United States
    + Google Map

Details

Organizers

  • SPCUNY
  • Jacquelyn Marie Shannon

Venue

  • Green Lung Studio
  • 22 Commerce Street
    Brooklyn, NY 11231 United States
    + Google Map