Pew Fellow Shavon Norris is a movement and theater artist who makes the unseen, seen. She uses performance to explore the full landscape of people’s internal lives—from grief to joy and pleasure—through a lens of personal healing.  

This year, two of Norris’ projects will focus on different stages of life from a Black, female-identifying perspective. Her piece The Becoming, which was performed at ArtPhilly’s What Now: 2026 festival, draws on interviews and oral histories to probe the conditions, challenges, and opportunities that Black girls and young women face as they approach adulthood. In November, her work THE CRONING—a meditation on the physical, emotional, social, mental, and spiritual nuances of transitioning into old age—will be remounted as an ensemble piece produced by Journey Arts at Christ Church Neighborhood House.

Here, Norris tells us about aging, her creative journey, and the role of wondering and wandering in her practice. 

What is driving you to create at this moment?  

I think I have what Octavia Butler called “a positive obsession.”  

I am obsessed with the body. Learning about the body, being with the body, listening to the body. Deepening my awareness of how I move. Watching how others move.  

I am curious about the rhythms, shapes, sizes, and names of our gestures. How we greet each other. How we hide ourselves. How we breathe. How we move our grief and pleasure and disappointment. I am curious about how our stories travel out of bodies. How the cadence and accents and melodies of our bodies reflect time, culture, and systems.  

I am presently in a middle-aged body. I turned 49 in March of 2026. I am in a body that is shifting and changing and tossing my emotional and mental states all about. I am new to myself each day, and new sometimes moment to moment, because of the rapid and nonstop changes. I sometimes struggle to quiet myself long enough to hear what my body needs and wants. I am finding this experience deeply human and unsettling, and absolutely ridiculous at times.  

In this moment—with my present and persistent and positive obsession—I find myself creating because I want to connect. I want to tether myself to myself. And I want to tether myself to others. I want to understand my body, my stories. I want to understand the bodies and stories of others. As the volume of the world in this moment pierces all parts of me, I reach for my obsession and I want to body more. I want to move and understand. Move and connect. Move and sweat. Move and hold. Move and rage. Move and pleasure. Move and love. Move and be.  

Was there a moment when you began to identify yourself as an artist?  

I am Bronx born and raised. I was a math and science centered kid that took dance classes. I was, and still am, a serious and sensitive sort. I wanted to be a doctor. I was an overachiever. Somewhere in my development:
In the one-bedroom apartment in the Bronx I grew up in.
In the family I was born into.
My grandmother being a first-generation child and 1 of 10 children.
Me being born the oldest and first-born daughter.
Me being the first granddaughter and great granddaughter.
Somewhere in my development, in the Black Baptist Church where we worshipped.  
In the school I walked to each day.
In the dance classes where I spent evenings and weekends.
Somewhere in my development, I decided achieving and being good would help keep me safe. So, I achieved. I was 6th grade valedictorian. I skipped the 8th grade. I took the AP classes. I went to college and majored in Biology and minored in Math, Education, and English. I wanted to be a good student, a good dancer, a good daughter and Christian. I thought achieving and being good would keep my personhood, my girlhood, my Blackness, and all my sensitivities safe. 

After graduation I decided I didn’t want to be a doctor anymore. Something felt off. When I was 25, I found myself having a quarter-life crisis. I was dissatisfied with my living. I needed more meaning, more purpose. I needed a change. It was very dramatic; I am a Pisces. I considered applying to the Peace Corps, but that felt off. And then 9/11 happened.

That day shifted my inner life. I was quaked by it. Rearranged by it. I started asking myself purpose and pleasure questions, asking myself life and death questions. I invited myself to be with the questions and answers I had been avoiding. By the end of that year, I had applied to two MFA programs, Temple University and Sarah Lawrence College. I got into both and picked the one further from home. Further from the things I thought would keep me safe and good.

I remember the day of 9/11. And I remember the day after 9/11. The day of 9/11 is blurry and loud. I remember images on screens. I remember trying to find and reach family and friends. I remember confusion and smoke. I remember ash and the color grey, a grey I have not seen or felt since. The day after 9/11, I remember the clarity of needing and wanting to be with art. I remember words whispering in me. Words like we don’t want to wait anymore. We can’t wait anymore. I remember the sharp and pulsing desire. To call and name myself: Artist. I believe this is my artist origin story.

How has your creative practice evolved in the last five or ten years? What has surprised you in your own work?  

I don’t remember anyone explicitly telling me what the rhythm of creating and producing work should be. I do remember, early in my artistic practice and career, everything moved too fast for me: the start of a process, the production of the work. It all swirled by me. I struggled to feel in relationship with the art, in collaboration with the art. The art unfolded and I found myself running to keep up with it; I wanted more time to be with it.  

Over the last decade, I have invited myself to prioritize being. Soft and slow and sweet, with myself, as a human, and as an artist. I’ve learned how to allow myself the years it takes for me to seed and grow and produce my work. The African elephant carries their young for 22 months. Orcas up to 18 months. Alpine salamanders up to 4 years. I gestate with my art for a bit. I want the time, the years it takes, to sleep with an idea. To take long walks with an image. To hold the hand of the art and let it guide me. I get lost, and ponder. And wonder. And wander. I meander. Sometimes a little and sometimes a lot. I used to have so much judgment about how long I wanted to be with the process of making. And now, I am pleasantly surprised—delighted, even—by how much I enjoy getting lost while I am making a thing.