Community School of Music and Art (CSMA)

Located at 330 East State Street, Ithaca, NY 14850

For more information please go to csma-ithaca.org

Main Gallery and Lower Gallery

Lola Drake: Excise

EXCISE was originally envisioned to be a micro theater performance for the Performing Identities Across Cultures festival, which was scheduled at CSMA in November of 2025. Unfortunately after the passing of the event’s organizer, Debbie Castillo, Lola’s piece had nowhere to be presented. In loving memory of Debbie, here is EXCISE this November. There is a Day of the Dead altar downstairs since November 2nd that will stay throughout the exhibit.

As a micro theater piece, EXCISE was already difficult to envision. Lola wanted the spectator to walk around the gallery with headphones between the other performers. She compromised by making a physical “lyric video” of the song where you follow the lyrics down the walls and to the altar downstairs. The song, which is also available on Lola's band's SoundCloud page, is provided via QR code or with phones that have headphones linked for the gallery patrons to follow along with the lyrics without listening to the other patrons’ progress. The hope is that the call to action compounded with the silent grieving can have some impact outside the gallery.

Lola Drake is a multimodal artivist based in the Finger Lakes. In theater, she worked as Ana Florencia López Ulloa with Debbie Castillo’s Teatrotaller for fifteen years, culminating in her play, Diamantina Rosa, making it to stage in New York and a Southern Mexican tour. In literature, she writes as Florencia Ulloa and you can find her two novels, French Elastic and Unmasked Silence, and their translations, on Amazon with Editorial Kintsugi. She fronts the band The Road Taken as Lola Drake, whom she is currently promoting Roots, their fifth studio album. Find out more and access Lola's work at anaflorenciaulloa.com