Marc Bamuthi Joseph the break/s: a mixtape for the stage Thursday–Saturday, March 26–28, 2009

Photo by Bethanie Hines

mcachicago.org Marc Bamuthi Joseph— the break/s: a mixtape for the stage By Marc Bamuthi Joseph World premiere productions of the break/s: a mixtape for the stage: 2008 Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors for the Living Word Project Theatre of Louisville, Kentucky (March 11–29, 2008) and Walker Directed by Michael John Garcés Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota (April 10–12, 2008) Lead commissioning and development support: Actors Theatre Performed by of Louisville; the Walker Art Center, with support from a Joyce Award; National Black Arts Festival; and Yerba Buena Center Marc Bamuthi Joseph for the Arts. DJ Excess the break/s was developed during residencies at Actors Tommy Shepherd (aka Soulati) Theatre of Louisville; Painted Bride Art Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; University of Wisconsin at Madison; Walker Art Center; and Z Space in , California. Dramaturgy by Brian Freeman The project has received generous support from The Wallace Video and co-set design by David Szlasa Alexander Gerbode Foundation and The William and Flora Lighting and co-set design by Hewlett Foundation Emerging Playwrights 2006 Initiative; The National Endowment for the Arts; Zellerbach Family James Clotfelter Foundation; Creative Capital; The James Irvine Foundation; Choreography by Stacey Printz Rockefeller MAP Fund; and Association of Performing Arts Documentary >lms by Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi Presenters Ensemble Theatre Collaborations Grant Program, a component of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Theatre Musical score composed by Initiative. It was commissioned by Youth Speaks through the Ajayi Lumumba Jackson East Bay Fund for Artists (EBFA) at the East Bay Community Foundation. Support for the EBFA comes from the Ford Arrangements and remixes by DJ Excess Foundation’s Leveraging Investment in Creativity (LINC) and Soulati Initiative, The James Irvine Foundation, The Surdna Foundation, Artistic consultation by Je= Chang The Wattis Foundation, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the East Bay Community Foundation. Executive producer: MAPP International Productions Production support: Kelvin Productions, LLC Technical supervisor: Pamela Traynor Stage manager: Rebecca Cullars Audio/video technician: Bill Toles

“Record Stacks” was composed by Soulati, “Gravity Can’t Help Me Now” was com- posed by DJ Excess.

The MCA presentation of the break/s is supported Marc Bamuthi Joseph extends special thanks to: The Youth in part by a grant from the National Endowment Speaks/Living Word Family, Erica Geller, Chinaka Hodge, Mai- for the Arts. Lei Pecorari, Danny Hoch, Faustin Linyekula, Ken Foster, Claire Verlet and the Centre National de la Danse, the entire sta= at MCA backstage hospitality is generously provided MAPP International Productions, and Willie Ney. by Whole Foods Market. artists up close 

To increase appreciation of the break/s: a mixtape for the stage, the MCA organized these intimate opportunities for audience members to engage with the artists. On Saturday, February 28, the MCA presented New On Tuesday, March 24, the Chicago Cultural America: Marc Bamuthi Joseph and Je= Chang in Center (72 E. Randolph Street) hosted Bamuthi Conversation. Reflecting on their creative trajecto- for a talk on his unique dual-career experience as ries, Bamuthi and journalist Je= Chang discussed a performance artist and artistic director of Youth their experiences working for change through youth Speaks. He provided insight into the infrastructure and community organizing, media justice, culture, of the arts and its role in a=ecting political and the arts, and hip-hop activism. Stephanie Shonekan, social policy. This event was co-organized with Black World Studies Director at Columbia College, the Administration and Policy Department at the facilitated their dialogue. School of the Art Institute. On Monday, March 23, at Little Black Pearl (1060 Thursday, March 26 E. 47th Street), Bamuthi discussed the globaliza- First Night postshow talk tion of hip-hop from his perspective as a member Audience members are invited to stay for a talk of the generation that came into adulthood during with Marc Bamuthi Joseph and collaborators the movement’s initial rise in the US. Earlier that immediately following the performance. day, he led the second of three training and creative sessions with youth who are participating in Brave New Voices Chicago 2009, the five-day festival produced by Bamuthi as part of Youth Speaks, the nation’s leading spoken word organization based in Oakland, California.

Brave New Voices Chicago 2009, July 14–19 Crowning Brave New Voices week is Life is Living, Join us for Bamuthi’s annual touring festival that a full day of interdisciplinary, intergenerational, celebrates the power of youth and culture. More eco-equity performance events. Life is Living than 500 Teen Poetry Slam champions are con- is part of Bamuthi’s year-round, national, eco- vening from 40 states to build community and empowering campaign run by his theater com- hone their craft as participants in this national pany, the Living Word Project, which is spawning competition as well as master workshops led by a new form of green spoken stories to represent renowned poets and writers. The festival also changing perspectives on what it means to be features many free public events at the MCA, environmentally just. The Merle Reskin Theatre, the Chicago Theater, For the Brave New Voices Chicago 2009 parks, cafes, and other sites. Highlights include schedule, visit youthspeaks.org later music concerts, gra;ti mural bouts, and dance this summer. performances by leading hip-hop artists. About the Artists

Marc Bamuthi Joseph ect Youth Speaks, for which he mentors 13–19- is an educator and performer, and the artistic direc- year-old writers and curates the Living Word tor of the Living Word Project, a theater company Festival for Literary Arts. His next performance dedicated to the aesthetics of post-hip-hop per- project, red black and green: a blues, documents formance. In fall 2007 Bamuthi graced the cover the eco-equity movement toward green-collar jobs of Smithsonian magazine after being named one in black neighborhoods. of America’s Top Young Innovators in the Arts and Sciences. He is a National Poetry Slam champion, DJ Excess Broadway veteran, GOLDIE award winner, featured is a pioneer in the world of scratch music, an inno- artist on Russell Simmons’s Def Poetry on HBO, vation that melds standard music production with and inaugural recipient of the Artists turntabling. He is part of the world-renowned DJ Rockefeller Fellowship. crew Ned Hoddings and the up-and-coming crew The Crate Bullies. DJ Excess made his MCA debut Bamuthi entered the world of literary performance in 2006 with fellow native IXL as Hop-Fu, after crossing the sands of “traditional” theater, a multimedia project combining hip-hop music with most notably on Broadway in the Tony Award–win- kung-fu films created by John Carluccio and Barry ning The Tap Dance Kid and Stand-Up Tragedy. His Cole. Other scoring projects include No Condition evening-length works have been presented through- Is Permanent and Apostrophe for the gra;ti col- out the United States and Europe and include Word lective The Barnstormers. His studio production Becomes Flesh, which was part of the MCA’s spring credits include mix CDs and vinyl “bringles” (break 2006 season, as well as Scourge, De/Cipher, and record/singles) released through his record label No Man’s Land. His work has been made possible Styluswars; scratches created for Pepsi International, by several prestigious foundation awards, including Sesame Street, and Schie=elin & Sommerset grants from the , the Center for (Hennessy Cognac); and music featured in the 2004 Cultural Innovation, Creative Capital, the National Showtime series Street Time, and the 2005 Playboy Performance Network Creation Fund, the Wallace A. video game The Mansion. Gerbode Foundation, the Creative Work Fund, the Rockefeller MAP Fund, the National Endowment Excess has performed throughout North for the Arts, the Hewlett Foundation, and a Dance America, Asia, and Europe. He won the 1999 Advance award from the PEW Foundation. International Turntablist Federation East Coast Advancement Class Championships and the 2000 As a nationally recognized educator and essayist, US Advancement Class and Western Hemisphere Bamuthi has lectured at more than 100 colleges Scratching Championships. He has been featured and universities, been a commentator on National in URB magazine’s “Next 100” issue, Newsweek, Public Radio, and held adjunct professorships Scratch, The Source, XXL, and Fader. at Stanford University, Mills College, and the University of Wisconsin. Bamuthi is an artist Tommy Shepherd (aka Soulati) in residence at ODC Theater; Yerba Buena Center is an actor, playwright, b-boy, rapper, drummer, for the Arts; and Intersection for the Arts, all in San and beatboxer. As an actor he appears on the chil- Francisco, California. He is most proud of his proj- dren’s cooking show Doof and toured internationally 

Photo by Umi Vaughan 

with Marc Bamuthi Joseph in Scourge. He at Second Stage, Woolly Mammoth, the Atlantic scored the music of Donald Lacy’s Color Struck Theater Co., The Cherry Lane, Repertorio Español, and is cofounder of the hip-hop band Felonious: the Huntington Theatre Company, Florida Stage, onelovehiphop, which performs internationally Playwrights Horizons, and Yale Repertory Theatre. and also develops theatrical productions. Shepherd Cornerstone Theater recently produced Garcés’s is a longtime Hybrid Resident Artist at Intersection play Los Illegals, created in residence with day labor- for the Arts in San Francisco, California, which pre- ers and domestic workers. His other playwright sented his first one-act solo performance work, credits include tostitos (Ensemble Studio Theatre The MF in ME, at its Grounded Festival of New 2008 Marathon); points of departure (INTAR); Acts Works. He is also a member of resident theater of Mercy (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater); audio company Campo Santo. With Intersection for the video (The Directors Project); agua ardiente (The Arts, he has acted and composed the live score in American Place Theatre); and Stations, a collabora- Hamlet: Blood in the Brain by Naomi Iizuka with tion with composer Alexandra Vrebalov (Rhode Campo Santo; was sound designer and composer Island Civic Chorale and Orchestra). Garcés is with Howard Wiley for A Place To Stand; was musi- the recipient of the Princess Grace Statue and the cal director and live vocal musician for, as well as Alan Schneider Director Award. He serves on the acted in, a fist of roses by Philip Kan Gotanda with Executive Board of the Society of Stage Directors Campo Santo; and acted, beatboxed, and com- and Choreographers, and is a resident playwright posed with Scheherazade Stone of the live score, at New Dramatists in New York. for Domino with Campo Santo. He has performed with Erika Chong Shuch’s ESP Project in San Brian Freeman Francisco for her dance theater performances one is a playwright, dramaturge, theater director, window and 51802, and collaborated with Dan Wolf and actor. He has taught theater, playwriting, on the work Stateless, which toured Europe in 2008. and performance at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, California Institute for the Arts, San Michael John Garcés Francisco Art Institute, and Colorado College, and is artistic director of Cornerstone Theater Company is a visiting artist at University of California, Los in . His directing credits include Angeles’s Department of World Arts and Cultures. Someday by Julie Marie Myatt for Cornerstone His work has been published in the anthologies Theater; The Falls by Je=rey Hatcher (The Guthrie West Coast Plays; Out, Loud and Laughing; Colored Theater/Cornerstone Theater); dark play, or sto- Contradictions: Contemporary Black Plays and ries for boys by Carlos Murillo and Finer Noble Performance; and Staging Gay Lives. His play Civil Gases by Adam Rapp (Actors Theatre of Louisville, Sex was published in The Fire This Time: African Humana Festival); Light Raise the Roof (New York American Plays for the 21st Century by T.C.G Press. Theatre Workshop) and Snapshot Silhouette (The Freeman’s awards include a Bessie, a California Children’s Theatre Company) by Kia Corthron; Teo Arts Council Playwriting Fellowship, and the CalArts Castellanos’s solo performance N.E. 2nd Avenue Alpert Award in Theater. In his role as dramaturge, (Miami Light Project and subsequent engage- he developed Crossing America by Keith Adkins; ments); and The Cook by Eduardo Machado The Gibson Girl by Kristen Greenidge; (Hartford Stage and INTAR); as well as plays 

The Watts Towers Project by Roger Guenvere Smith; Walker Art Center, The Kitchen, and Sydney Slide/Glide the Slippery Slope by Kia Corthron; Live Opera House. In 2001 he traveled to the Harare From the Front by Jerry Quickley; Last Rites by Letta International Festival of the Arts in Zimbabwe with Neely; Mother’s Milk by Wayne Harris; Aesop: Alive Universal Arts’s the Beat. His other design credits and Well by Diane Ferlatte; Dreaming Backwards by include Rennie Harris Puremovement’s Facing Diane Ferlatte, Anita Jones, and Rhodessa Jones; MeKKa (lights), Synaesthetic Theatre’s The Trial The Sweetest Taboo by Ricardo Braccho; Perfect of K (set), Deb Margolin’s Index to Idioms (lights Courage by Rhodessa Jones, Bill T. Jones, and Idris and video), Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s Scourge (video), Ackamoor; Ashes to Ashes by Marijo; The Gospel and Encore Theater’s Five Flights (lights). Szlasa is According to Wayne by Wayne Corbett; Sapelo: Time production designer for Sara Shelton Mann’s Telios/ is Winding Up by Diane Ferlatte; I Think It’s Gonna Telios and Inspirare. He holds a bachelor of fine arts Work Out Fine by Ed Bullins and Cultural Odyssey; degree from Tisch School of the Arts; a master of and The Rent Party by Cultural Odyssey. arts degree in New Media and Performance from the Gallatin School, (NYU); David Szlasa and taught design for Playwrights Horizons Theater is committed to producing art and directing artists School, a division of NYU. with a conscious desire to a=ect social change. He created, directed, and produced the interdisciplinary James Clotfelter performance works Dissection (1997); Light (2000); is a New York–based lighting designer commit- and GADGET (2006), an immersive, media-based ted to the creation of collaborative and socially performance developed through a series of original conscious work. He is resident lighting designer interviews with living members of the Manhattan and production manager for Miro Dance Theatre Project. He is developing his new work, My HOT (Hurdy Gurdy and Lie to Me); resident lighting Lobotomy, as part of STREAM/fest, a program of designer for Gas & Electric Arts (Anna Bella Eema, Counter Pulse Theater in San Francisco, California. Voices Underwater, and Quicksilver); and an artis- Szlasa is managing director and part of the curato- tic associate with Pig Iron Theatre Company of rial team at the Z Space Studio in San Francisco, Philadelphia. He is a cofounder of Mlab, a labora- an organization dedicated to the development of tory for innovation and design technologies in the new theater by Bay Area artists. Szlasa was produc- live arts. Mlab recently created the visual design tion manager and designer for Theater Artaud in for Color-ography: The Dances of Jacob Lawrence San Francisco, and from 2002–2004 he served as with Dayton Contemporary Dance Company and is production manager and designer-in-residence at currently working with Rennie Harris on a series of the Culture Project @ 45 Bleecker, where he opened new works. Through Mlab, Miro Dance Theatre col- The Exonerated (Obie Award), Sarah Jones’s Bridge laborated with Prism Quartet on the creation of the and Tunnel (Lortel Award), and Red Bull Theater’s performance/installation work Pitch Black, which Pericles, among others. premiered at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Clotfelter’s independent col- As a designer Szlasa has collaborated with Bill laborations include work with Pig Iron for Chekhov “Crutchmaster” Shannon for the past six years on Lizzardbrain, Mission to Mercury, and 365 (featur- work performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, 10 Photo by Umi Vaughan

ing Cynthia Hopkins); Rainpan 43 for machines She has taught master classes and workshops machines machines machines machines machines for universities and studios across the United machines; Johannes Wieland for Progressive Coma, States and the Netherlands as well as Belgium, and New You!; and The Living Word Project (Marc Russia, Lithuania, and Ireland. Founded in 1998, Bamuthi Joseph) for Scourge. Past collaborations her company has home seasons at the Cowell include work with Rennie Harris, Reggie Wilson, Theater in San Francisco and has toured exten- Antony Rizzi, Bill Shannon, Hubbard Street Dance sively through California and nationally, notably Chicago, Phrenic New Ballet, and Deeply Rooted in New York, Memphis, Arizona, and Colorado as Dance. Clotfelter received a bachelor of fine arts well as Lithuania, Russia, and Ireland. Printz has degree in Lighting Design from Tulane University. choreographed for many companies in California and received numerous awards and grants from the Stacey Printz Zellerbach Family Foundation, the W&F Hewlett is a Bay Area–based choreographer, dancer, and Foundation, Fort Mason Foundation, and a New educator and artistic director of the Printz Dance Work Fellowship from the Marin Arts Council Project (PDP). Printz received degrees in sociol- among others. Printz contributed choreography ogy and dance from the University of California, for Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s Scourge and is creating Irvine. In addition to teaching at San Francisco work with live music and spoken word honoring Dance Center in California, she has been on Intersection for the Arts’s 40th anniversary. For the faculty at St. Mary’s College, Sonoma State more information, visit printzdance.org. University, and Rochester Contemporary Art Center. 11

Ajayi Lumumba Jackson York in 2003. Jacobs-Fantauzzi has been featured is a musician, composer, producer, and educa- in Anthem magazine, NRG magazine, and Libertad tor. He holds a bachelor of arts degree in classical Journal. HomeGrown, his documentary on hip-hop bassoon performance and is recognized for perfor- in Ghana is currently in production. As a filmmaker, mance of Haitian and West African percussion and he couples a dedication to craft with commitment trap drum. He is musical director for various per- to social justice and awareness. formance artists as well as dance and theater com- panies, and on the faculty of the Oakland Public Kelvin Productions (Vincent J. Demarco) Conservatory. He is director of the Haitian folkloric is a full-service production company based dance company Neg Diaspora and operates Oaklion in , New York. Its theater credits include Productions, a film score and commercial produc- The Screwtape Letters (FPA/Aruba Productions); tion house. His credits include Marc Bamuthi The 51st (dream) state, blessing the boats, and Joseph’s Scourge and Word Becomes Flesh. He has Low: Meditations with the Goddess (MAPP), composed for and/or performed with Deep Waters Fantasy Traveller (CAMI); and Cookin’ (RFPNY). Dance, Anne Bluethenthal and Dancers, New World The firm was production supervisor for Classical Ballet, L.E.E.Movement, Traci Bartlow and Dancers, Theatre of Harlem productions from 2006 to 2008. Dimensions Dance Theater, Ase Dance Collective, It also supervised Seaside Summer and the MLK Petit la Croix, Lauryn Hill, the Black Eyed Peas, Zion Concert Series in Brooklyn. Its artist roster includes I, E. W. Wainwright, Prince Lawsha, John Santos, Anita Baker, John Legend, Liza Minelli, Natalie Cole, Omar Sosa, Faye Carrol, and Adam Rudolph, and LL Cool J. among others. He is composing for the projects Beauty The Beast and Bopha. Pamela Traynor lives in , where she works as a pro- Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi duction/video specialist. Her credits include Power is a graduate of University of California, Berkeley, to Pleasing: The Sex Lives of Teenage Girls, The and holds a Master of Arts from the Tisch School Wedding Channel, Eat-Drink-Live 24-7-365, Pilobolus, of the Arts at New York University. Before gradu- Children of Children, and the upcoming documen- ation, he won the prestigious juried Student tary Our Children: Death Row. For more information, Filmmaker Award from the Pan African Film Festival visit pamelatraynor.com. for his documentary Inventos: Hip-Hop Cubano, a film he shot, directed, edited, and produced. Jacobs- Bill Toles Fantauzzi has traveled extensively in the Caribbean is a musician, producer, filmmaker, and sound and Africa, and produced and directed several designer. He has collaborated as sound designer shorts and music videos, including the award-win- on Marlies Yearby and Craig Harris’s Brown ning music video from Ghana, Besin. His first film, Butterfly (live in 5.1 surround); sound designer i of MOTION us of MOVEMENT, chronicled the life and composer for Sekou Sundiata’s blessing the of four women hip-hop artists in the San Francisco boats, which toured for five years; and composer Bay area. His film Inventos, the first in-depth look for The 51st (dream) state by Sundiata, which pre- at hip-hop culture in , premiered in miered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2006. and at the H2O International Film Festival in New He made his theatrical debut in 2003 at The Kitchen 12 Photo by Bethanie Hines in New York as a producer with Tracie Morris’s one-woman show Afrofuturistic, which received NEFA/NDP funds.

The Living Word Project (LWP) is the resident theater company of Youth Speaks, Inc., a premiere youth poetry, spoken word, and creative writing program. The Living Word Project is committed to producing literary performance in the verse of our time. Aesthetically urban and pedagogically Freirean, LWP derives personally performed narratives from interdisciplinary col- laboration. Though its methodology includes dance, music, and film, the company’s emphasis is spoken storytelling. LWP creates verse-based work that is communicated through the body, illustrated by visual and sonic scores, and in communication with the important social issues and movements of the immediate moment. LWP is the theater’s connection from Shakespeare’s quill to Kool Herc’s turntables; from Martha Graham’s cupped hand to Nelson Mandela’s clenched fist: a new voice for a rected by veteran arts producers and managers Ann new politic. Repertory works include No Man’s Land, Rosenthal and Cathy Zimmerman, who have devel- Cause, Word Becomes Flesh, Scourge, In Spite of oped 27 multidisciplinary projects and produced Everything, and War Peace. For further information, well over 50 multicity tours with American and please visit livingwordproject.org. international artists from 13 countries in Asia, Africa, Artistic Director, Marc Bamuthi Joseph Europe, and the Caribbean. Working on behalf Producing Director, Joan Osato of artists and their organizations, Rosenthal Associate Artistic Director, Chinaka Hodge and Zimmerman have raised and managed more than $3.5 million from foundations, corporations, MAPP International Productions government agencies, and co-commissioners works in close partnership with diverse artists and for the realization and distribution of new work. arts organizers throughout the world to develop For more information about the break/s, contact: functional and sustainable environments in which artists can create, premiere, and tour performing MAPP International Productions arts projects. It provides support and opportuni- 140 Second Avenue, Suite 502 ties for challenging artistic voices to be fully heard New York, NY 10003 and engaged by bringing together arts, humanities, 646.602.9390 and public dialogue. MAPP International is codi- mappinternational.org