NEFA selected STUCK ELEVATOR as one of their National Theatre Pilot projects, which may help you with $ if your venue wants to be part of our world tour (which begins at HERE in January 2013, then goes to the 2013 International Festival of Arts & Ideas and beyond).
In summer 2011, my collaborators and I: expanded the New Haven León Theater Project to include Teatro Foro en Nicaragua and A PEASANT OF EL SALVADOR (by Peter Gould and Stephen Stearns) in the U.S.; workshopped a brand-spankin new version of KINGDOM at the Atlantic Theatre Company; workshopped HOW TO BREAK at CAP21 and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
This summer, I’m performing my hip-hop poetry at a venue near you (That is, if you happen to be in New Haven on July 1st for Free 2 Spit, or GIA in Castleton, VT on July 7th, or the World Fellowship Center in Conway, NH on July 16th.) Jon Rua and Yayo Serka collaborated with me on the above piece, Charge, when I should have been working on Stuck Elevator at the 2011 Sundance Theatre Lab in Banff, Canada. They will not be at any of my upcoming performances, however, because they were traumatized by elk in Banff, and elk are related to moose, and moose are in New England, and New England is where my performances are.
STUCK ELEVATOR has been selected for the 2011 Sundance Theatre Lab. Me and Byron’s comic-rap-scrap-metal-music-theatre-craziness will be trapped at Sundance’s 2011 Theatre Institute in Banff, Canada from March 27-April 17.
Hip-hop choreographers Kwikstep and Rokafella, human beatboxers Adam Matta and Yako 440, director Christopher Edwards and I are creating HOW TO BREAK – using hip-hop movement, rhyme, vocal percussion, and theatre to tell the stories of teenagers learning to live while their bodies are breaking.
HOW TO BREAK was born at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s 2010 Mixing Texts workshop. After a few more devising/rehearsing sessions (thanks, Bronx Academy of Arts & Dance, the Parachute Factory, and NYU!), we performed a 45-minute workshop at The Big Room’s Take Your Time fall festival in New Haven. It was so ill, we cannot wait for our next break.
Apparently, STUCK ELEVATOR flunked…
…our first Sundance Theatre Lab (Spring 2011 in Banff, Canada), so they’re bringing it back to try again. This time, they’re bringing me and Byron, director Chay Yew, dramaturg Polly Carl, music director Vadim Feichtner and company to the 2012 Sundance Theatre Lab at White Oak, a nature preserve in Florida. My mom: “How come your play is being performed at such a venue? Have you added jaguars and okapis to the script?” Good question, mom. Not yet. For the rest of you, here’s an okapi and its tongue, with which it can lick its eye.