• "Ashes Monroe puts together some of the most jarringly beautiful performances; they engage the audience on both a cerebral and a visceral level. See them if you can." - Paul Burry

  • "Kintsukuroi was beautiful and weird, like a surreal hyper-emotional dream" - Jordan Fickel

  • "San Franciscans, this is the BEST event you'll ever see in the city again! And I'm still talking about San Francisco... Don't miss it, or you'll regret it, I promise." - Maria Carolina Fujihara

  • "Run, don't walk! to see the amazing Joyce Lee in the final performance of amazing poetry circus "Kintsukuroi" by WitchTech in San Francisco! Blown away!" - Glynn Washington of Snap Judgement

  • "The shows were raw and emotional and eloquent in a way that really surprised me, the first time I experienced it. I'd truly never seen anything like it before. And the tickets are impossibly cheap given the level of artistry on display. If you are in town for a show, you should seriously cancel whatever plans you need to and go see it, because they don't come around very often, and it's extremely worth it." -Alice Shay Yu

  • "This art and performance group performs and invites you to engage in powerfully healing work. It's been a masterpiece every time I've seen it." -Angela Stucky

  • "What genre would you call this? Ashes Monroe" - Geoff Schmidt

  • "This is the best "Wolf" show in the trilogy. The melding of the circus acts with Jamie's stories is tight and well-integrated. I felt that the stories and the acts illuminated and reflected each other extremely well. Absolutely tour this show!" - Judy Finelli of Pickle Family Circus

  • "These shows aren’t for the faint of heart and can be cathartically moving. I believe in events like these as a necessary release or rite of passage through the chapters of our lives both personally and collectively." - Sophia Constance, performer in 'Kintsukuroi'

The Concept

About WitchTech

About WitchTech

WitchTech is a trans-inclusive artist collective celebrating and discussing women's issues, in the context of daily life and the culmination of events that create that life. We expand it using technology and often invite the viewer to live within it using immersive contexts. Our performances are committed to representing the inner-worlds of women as the main characters of their own stories. We encourage purposeful and elegant technological solutions that add to a performance instead of detracting. We aim to inspire women to reclaim their voice and their space, through the magic that these tools offer. Tools are only useful when you know how to use them, and we do.

"Witch" has been both a symbol of threat to be destroyed and a disembodied power that should be removed, especially from female hands. In the past, it has been used as an attacking word, referring to a weak person summoning a power beyond them in accomplishing something beyond their human abilities. WitchTech reclaims the term "Witch" as an earned symbol and updates the usage of "Craft" to "Tech" a more modern version of the two synonyms that has additional semantic baggage. Women were the original programmers, and yet with the rise of technological skill value, women were erased from that memory and have often since been assumed incapable of participating. In bringing technical "Witchcraft" to the stage, we seek to remind you.

About Ritual

In standard American culture, we've white-washed away a lot of the rites of passage that came through our ascendants. North America and the people contained within are thirsty for the inheritance of something. We are the orphaned teenagers of the world, and with that, we grapple with ideas of culture differently than other societies that have it woven into their buildings and beliefs that lay unquestioned. In some ways, we fight against that richness. We fight for the blank page. Though both terrifying and incredibly freeing, we cling to the idea that it is all up to us.

  • What do we hold sacred?
  • What are our rites of passage?
  • What is there to lose if we allow ourselves to be vulnerable and say what we're experiencing?

This is where we begin to write our future ancient texts.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”

- Arthur C. Clarke, The Three Laws

Direction

Director and Art Director

About Ashes Monroe

WitchTech Rituals was founded by Ashes Monroe, multi-disciplinary artist and art director. Her work primarily centers around the entirety of life-experience and meaning, existential questioning, and identity. With a predilection for intense emotional experiences, most of her pieces reflect and meditate on the vulnerable core of what makes us human without giving the viewer an escape from their own personal meditation.

You can often see her visual work in the performances she creates in the form of set design, puppetry and video art.

On the premise of WitchTech Rituals

Though identifying as non-binary, she inhabits a female body and has no particular problem with that. If It had been male she'd probably say the same thing. However, the problems and barriers that have come with being visibly female and the consequences for her own human identity, have caused a fascination that has led to artistic and pragmatic activism. We seek out voices that are often left unnoticed and lift them out of the noise to give them space. Though the emotions behind WitchTech are calm and thoughtful, we will never back down from the belief that human value and equality are not based in factors such as race, gender, orientation, or physical disability, but from the content and strength of our character.

Collaborators

Collaborators

Performers

Sophia Constance, Joyce Lee, Yuko Hata, Jamie DeWolf, Fleeky Flanco, Rachel Strickland, Anastasia Sauvage, Orion Griffiths, Toni Cannon, Kevin Armour, Maggie Powers, Ismael Acosta, Gemiah Kurzfield, Eka Boo Button, Darius Drooh.

Support

Supporters and Benefactors

Supporters

John Zorko, Paul Burry, Jason Krueger, Tom Poston, Angela Stucky, Paul Flint, Irene Zhou, Geoff Schmidt.

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