STAYCEE PEARL dance project & Soy Sos productions draw inspiration from many artists of the African Diaspora. One of our biggest inspirations by far is African-American Sci-Fi Writer Octavia Butler. In 2011, we premiered OCTAVIA at the Kelly Strayhorn Theater. This was the company’s second evening length production. OCTAVIA wove together a magical, multilayered world colored by Butler's storytelling sensibilities and an interpretation of the award winning writer’s life. It’s impossible not to be inspired by Octavia Butler! Octavia Butler refused the notion that people of color didn’t write and didn’t belong in Sci-Fi. Her brand of Afro-futurism has gone on to inspire many more writers and readers into the genre, and several decades since her first books hit the shelves, they continue to mirror our current reality. Read on for three questions with choreographer Staycee Pearl and Sound designer Herman “Soy Sos” Pearl on bringing this literary inspiration to life.