Tularosa: An American Dreamtime is a series of multidisciplinary performance works and storytelling installations, constructed around Kamara Thomas’ song-cycle and 2022 album. Each presentation is site-specific and created with intention for gallery, film, stage or public space. Iterations have included combinations of music, theatre, photography, archival material, sound and video installations, agitprop performance, and community art-making and storytelling.
Most recent iterations include performances at Princeton University’s Hurley Gallery and CoLab (Oct 2023) and Richardson Auditorium (Apr 2023), Boulder Circus Center, Santa Fe Art Institute, Boulder Museum of History, Shadowbox Studios, and public spaces throughout downtown Durham, NC.
Developmental work has also been distilled on film and video: The Death of Nebuchadnezzar (2023), Rolling Away and Las Ride to Las Cruces (2022), Good Luck America (2018) and Oh Gallows (2016).
The song-cycle and storywork responds to the Tularosa region of New Mexico— an area fought over for centuries by Apaches, Comanches, Mexican farmers, Texas ranchers and eastern railroad capitalists. Most of the region is now a US government missile range.
In the song-cycle, Kamara depicts various characters' journeys through a mythic American landscape and imagines Tularosa as the epicenter of the "American Dreamtime", where the living Earth takes American mythology to die and be reborn.
At a 2015 residency at Lincoln Center Education, Kamara presented the song-cycle in repertory for NYC public school teachers who developed curriculum around the work. She began recording the album in 2016 after a successful Kickstarter campaign. The album was released on May 13, 2022.
