Ravenna Samantha Shay
Ravenna Soley (she/her) also known as Samantha Shay in the muggle world, is a witch and priestess whose primary form of magic is through the practice of art and performance. She is a multidisciplinary artist, performer, director of theatre and film, and movement artist. As a creative instigator, catalyzer and master collaborator, her acclaimed body of work challenges traditional boundaries, creates new connections, and dances across the fault lines between disciplines. She is currently a Special Research Fellow in Theatre Directing at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale, and is also the Artistic Director of Source Material, an interdisciplinary production company and artist collective, which she founded in 2014. From 2021 - 2023 Ravenna was a Guest Artist & Researcher at the Pina Bausch Dance Theatre, where she began as a Fulbright Scholar in 2021. During that time she created and launched numerous projects, some of which are still in development, and she still calls Wuppertal, Germany, home.
Ravenna works in diverse and extreme environments - from Witchcamp to Ivy league institutions. She seeks to bring the power of counternormative belonging to the places it is least expected. This relates deeply to her specifically American, biracial, and disabled identity: with acute and intimate childhood experiences of privilege, marginalization, and intersectionality, her witchcraft is about leveraging her power, privilege, access, and ever growing awareness to create change not only in the art she makes, but the platforms she has access to. Her witchcraft is radical: not only emerging in the forest, but in meetings with U.S. Congress as a Fulbright Scholar, in the hallways of Yale University, and in the largest city theaters of Europe (where politicians appoint Leadership), and in direct, and sometimes, deeply challenging conversation with overt and covert sources of power.
Ravenna is also deeply passionate about lineage and artistic ancestry, and her deep research into the work of Pina Bausch. Her cross-generational, and cross-cultural collaborations with Pina’s colleagues are a sacred path of understanding artistic lineage through a magical lens. She is currently working on a new production that explores post-traumatic response in theatre, and circles around not only the lineage of Bausch, but also Jerzy Grotowski, whose work was inspired by Shamanism and the Holy as a response to genocide. Ravenna is also passionate about how cross-cultural forms of storytelling, and dismantling the linear is a form of decolonization, and interrogates white supremacy culture and patriarchy. This is the engine that drives her artistic work, and academic research as a scholar.
Ravenna first came to Reclaiming in 2014, and has been priestessing and teaching when it feels most aligned to serve the community. Dancing between underground magic in the dominant culture, and the deep and intimate magic in the forest with beloveds, she is grateful for all the ways we as witches can walk in the world and gather. She greatly looks forward to teaching again among her home community, and chosen family this year!