THEY TEND TO THEMSELVES: OPENING NIGHT SOLD OUT, AUDIENCES LEFT BREATHLESS

They Tend To Themselves: A Choreopoem

Critics and Audiences Hail Hollywood Fringe Scholarship Recipient’s World Premiere Choreopoem
Three Performances Remaining — June 18, 24 and 28
Funded by Hollywood Pantages Theatre and County Supervisor Lindsey P. Horvath

LOS ANGELES, CA — They Tend to Themselves, the choreopoem written and performed by Gabrielle Jackson, sold out its opening night performance at the Hollywood Fringe Festival, drawing a packed house to the Los Angeles LGBT Center’s Davidson/Valentini Theatre on June 6th. Audiences and critics alike responded with an outpouring of praise, with several calling the production one of the most powerful theatrical experiences of the Festival.
The evening made history in its own right. When a technical issue caused a key piece of music to drop from the show’s cue list mid-performance, Jackson turned to her sold-out audience and asked them to sing her original melody with her. They did — without hesitation. The resulting moment moved Jackson to tears and left audiences describing the experience as unlike anything they had ever witnessed in a theatre.
They Tend to Themselves follows Rainbow Delicious, a Black woman navigating the intersections of race, gender, sexuality and selfhood, as she confronts the fear of her own reflection. Moving through grief, ancestral wisdom and radical self-love, the show draws on Afrofuturism and Indigenous Futurism — the belief that time moves in a spiral and that our ancestors and future selves are always reaching toward us — to arrive at a single, revolutionary truth: that tending to yourself is not an indulgence but an inheritance.

WHAT AUDIENCES AND CRITICS ARE SAYING
“Gabrielle is a familiar vision. Immediately, I feel as though I know her, have seen her before. As she grabbed the hand of a Black woman and spoke truth through touch, she erased years of pain, opened a portal for healing and made way for enlightenment. I was left breathless. I left the theatre in tears but ready to tend to my spirit. Words are not enough. Go see this show.”
— Audience Review, Hollywood Fringe Festival 2026
“Jackson’s performance is powerful, grounded, and graceful. Her poetic delivery lingers long after the show ends and leaves you thinking about what it truly means to tend to yourself. A thoughtful, intimate, and visually engaging performance led by a powerful Gabrielle Jackson — a meaningful production and one worth seeing during this year’s Festival.”
— Dondre Tuck, LATheatrix

REMAINING PERFORMANCES
Wednesday, June 24, 2026 — 7:30 PM
Sunday, June 28, 2026 — 9:15 PM
Venue: Los Angeles LGBT Center, Davidson/Valentini Theatre
Address: 1125 North McCadden Place, Los Angeles, CA
Runtime: 50 minutes, no intermission
Use code SJSLA at checkout to pay what you can.
Tickets: www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/9428

ABOUT GABRIELLE JACKSON
Gabrielle Jackson is a writer, performer, director and educator based in Long Beach, California. A multidisciplinary storyteller whose work explores the intersections of identity, memory, spirituality and liberation, she is a 2026 Hollywood Fringe Scholarship recipient — selected from hundreds of applicants festival-wide. They Tend to Themselves is her debut full-length solo work.

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