Craft Service
Created by: Jenna Anast
Welcome to Craft Service, an experience that shares recipes for nourishment, recipes for success, spells and stories. I believe that with imagination, play, and application we can create the world we want to see. If you believe this too, this is the show for you! And if you don’t believe, well, we hope to change your mind. So come take a journey with me. We are everything we need.
In Craft Service, creator Jenna Anast shares ritual, performance, conversation, and healing to unite Black and Brown people around the world.
A documentary series propelled by an experimental vibe, Craft Service is a journey revealing how art and community heal. From Chicago to Johannesburg and Guadalajara, Jenna introduces us to everyday and extraordinary people working to create beauty for themselves and the people they love.
Season one takes place in Chicago and Johannesburg. Comedian Hannibal Buress launches the show with Jenna in OTV’s studio with a conversation on sauteed spinach and evolves into a spirited defense of ashiness. Between is an interlude cuts in with a shot of spinach on a pan, over which Jenna recites affirmation: “Write a letter to the person you will become. Breeeeeeeaathe. Drink water. Stretch. Ask for help! Write a love letter to the person you are now. Be Present!” Here we see how the show concocts recipes for casting live-affirming spells and embracing one’s messiness, with a helpful hint to remember to eat your veggies.
But this isn’t your typical self-care delivery mechanism as we’ve come to know on social media. Beyond affirmations the show serves documentation of interpersonal and community conversations.
In season 2, Jenna explores Black and Brown/Latiné solidarity. They travel to Pilsen in Chicago, historically a Mexican-American enclave, to make art and candles with people of all ages. That year, Pilsen was the epicenter of Black and Brown tensions. During the 2020 Black Lives Matters uprising, Pilsen residents assaulted and intimidated Black people on the street, even people who had lived there for years. A Pilsen resident, Jenna had to flee the neighborhood for several weeks as they were publicly supporting many of the most public activists.
Returning to Pilsen after the heat subsided, Jenna talks to Pilsen resident, Black and Brown, about what the neighborhood and their communion meant to them:
“Part of me holding space here is bringing that Black and Brown solidarity that I know exists together again, eliminate these borders that have always been in Chicago,” says Jenna, Elmwood Park-born and raised. “There’s no separation and the love is there, and especially Black and Brown people need to love on each other.”
In interviews holding their candles and creations, an intergenerational group of people discuss their dreams for the Pilsen community, most discussing the importance of connection–to youth, to the neighborhood, to each other–amid the gentrification of the neighborhood.
Then Jenna flys to Guadalajara. While assisting OTV’s Brave Futures program, Jenna spoke with Hector Macias Nuño. As Jenna speaks about their death doula journey, Hector talks about their journey with Catholicism, going deeper into it in their youth but then leaving it, breaking generational traumas that limited their opportunity to explore their own sovereignty.
The conversation grows into one of breaking curses in our family line by reminding ourselves of our joy and freedom, which are, ultimately, the most essential ingredients to any divine spell!