Photos by Bayou Elom
Say You’re Sorry is also a series of participatory performances and installations about forgiveness that began in 2019. The five initial projects— Forgivability Scale, Shadowboxing, Hard Feelings: A Show About Grudges, Truce, and Forgive Or Forget— led first to The Say You’re Sorry Workbook (2020) and then to the culminating work (2023).
The Forgivability Scale (2019-23) is a 32-foot-long quilt that depicts a double-sided arrow running between “Unforgivable” at one end and “Easily Atoned” at the other.
Call Your Mom created a corresponding question for each new performance or workshop to prompt participants to add their experiences to the scale.
Forgivability Scale interactions:
Jan 2019: Forgiveness Experiment at FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture (Baltimore, MD)
Oct 2019: Hard Feelings: A Show About Grudges at The Tank (New York City)
Jan 2020: Shadowboxing at Centro NAVE (Santiago, Chile)
May 2020: The Say You’re Sorry Workbook (Digital)
April 2022: A Work-In-Progress Performance at Gylleboverket (Simrishamn, Sweden)
September 2023: Say You’re Sorry at the Silver Spring Black Box (Silver Spring, MD)
Shadowboxing (2020) is an interactive movement/sound piece about painful and cathartic processes of self-forgiveness.
Centro NAVE / Santiago, Chile
Photos by Fernanda Ruiz
Forgive Or Forget (2020) is an interactive sculpture and series of interviews in English and Spanish with people living in Cotacachi, Ecuador. Participants articulate the different ways they process and narrativize the wrongs of their governments, families, and communities.
Hard Feelings: A Show About Grudges (2019) is a performance that uses audience experiences to discuss the making, holding, sharing, and shedding of grudges.
Truce (2019) is a two-channel video installation about how individuals and groups move through conflict without coming to a resolution.
Janet & Walter Sondheim Prize Semifinalist Exhibition / Baltimore, MD