-- December 18, 2025, 1:21 to 2:39 am Final repetition, final incantation:  I’m staying, I’m staying And you—and you—and you—you’re gonna love me PAIN. It courses through her, causing her to double over, twitching, hands clenched and shaky as the affect finds its expression through her body and its release through the escape valve afforded by her crescendoing voice. She lets it go, through and out. She turns around, staggering ever so slightly as she heads back toward the cur

II. Blurring Stages, Opaque Mirrors  -- December 17, 2025, 10:40 pm to 11:45 pm In the next section, Effie moves through affects and verbs as she grapples with the inescapability of her impending loss. She clings to Curtis, unable or unwilling to hide her mounting panic. But the touching, however frantic, isn’t necessarily for relation: it is to stave off abandonment and other primal anxieties around the disappearance of the other. They’re barely looking at each other, which

What traces of presence vibrate, even through absence? What does devotion look like, and feel like, in the wake of disappearance? Can love continue without any promise or possibility of return, let alone recognition? How do you turn mirrors from reflective panels into portals? How does a scream become sublime?  Enter Effie White, here played by Jennifer Hudson in the film adaptation of Dreamgirls . After spending years singing lead for the Dreamettes and dating Curtis, the ma