For Immediate Release New York Live Arts Announces Program Details and Schedule for 2014 Live Ideas Festival James Baldwin, This Time! April 23 – 27, 2014 James Baldwin, writer, January 9, 1963. Photograph by Richard Avedon © The Richard Avedon Foundation Highlights include a Keynote Conversation with Bill T. Jones, Carrie Mae Weems and Jamaica Kincaid, the world premiere of Nothing Personal, starring Colman Domingo, a preview of Carl Hancock Rux’s newest work Stranger On Earth and a special evening with Stew exploring his new ‘Notes of a Native Song’ Also included are the New York premiere of Charles O. Anderson’s Restless Natives, the world premiere of Dianne McIntyre’s Time is Time, an original video installation by Hank Willis Thomas, and a concluding conversation with Fran Lebowitz and Colm Tóibín New York, NY, January 15, 2014 (updated March 27, 2014) – New York Live Arts today announced the schedule of its second annual Live Ideas festival, James Baldwin, This Time! taking place April 23 – 27, 2014. Inaugurating “The Year of James Baldwin,” a city-wide celebration in 2014 - 15 of the continuing artistic, intellectual and moral presence of James Baldwin, on the occasion of what would have been his 90th year, James Baldwin, This Time! will present no fewer than 18 events in an array of theater, visual art, dance, video and literature featuring such artists as Carrie Mae Weems, Jamaica Kincaid, Suzan-Lori Parks, Stew, Carl Hancock Rux, Colman Domingo, Fran Lebowitz, Colm Tóibín, Charles O. Anderson, and Patricia McGregor. “New York Live Arts is proud to launch the monumental city-wide multidisciplinary festival The Year of James Baldwin with James Baldwin, This Time! and collaborate with such illustrious partners as Harlem Stage and the Columbia University School of the Arts,” stated Jean Davidson, Executive Director and CEO of New York Live Arts. “Bringing people, resources and big ideas together to examine the past and reimagine the future is important to New York Live Arts and we are incredibly thankful to the Ford Foundation and our colleagues at the Richard Avedon Foundation and the New School’s Vera List Center for Art and Politics for their support of our second annual Live Ideas festival.” “After the success of New York Live Arts’ inaugural Live Ideas festival, The Worlds of Oliver Sacks, we are thrilled to shift the focus to another multifaceted generator of and magnet for ideas, James Baldwin,” said Bill T. Jones, Executive Artistic Director of New York Live Arts. “James Baldwin is a unique and indispensable voice in twentieth-century art and ideas. He continues to shed light on the painful truths of our society, engaging us as almost no other figure does in the intractable conversation at the intersection of class, race, sex and violence. There were other powerful artists and social justice thinkers in his era, but what set James Baldwin apart was his ability to address, in terms at once poetic and visceral, what we can only call ‘Americanism.’” Among the highlights of the festival are the world premiere of the theater work Nothing Personal, based on the 1964 collaborative book by James Baldwin and Richard Avedon, directed by Patricia McGregor and starring Colman Domingo; a preview of Carl Hancock Rux’s play Stranger on Earth, featuring vocalist Marcelle Davies Lashley; an intimate evening with award-winning composer Stew, who shares his creative process surrounding his new Baldwin inspired work, Notes of a Native Song; the New York premiere of choreographer Charles O. Anderson’s Restless Natives; and the world premiere of choreographer Dianne McIntyre’s Time is Time. Also featured during the festival are an original video installation, inspired by the writings of Baldwin, by contemporary visual artist Hank Willis Thomas; and the speaking program “Jimmy at High Noon,” featuring poet Nikky Finney and others reading Baldwin’s work and discussing its impact. James Baldwin, This Time! is curated by celebrated non-fiction writer Lawrence Weschler in conjunction with Bill T. Jones. "For all his time in exile, and for all of the time he spent dwelling on the agonies of difference, Baldwin always spoke in a radical, cleansing and prophetic voice from the standpoint of an American – his own word, endlessly repeated – reclaiming and reconceiving that term in a way that seemed especially relevant to the poisoned discourses of our own era,” stated Weschler. “That’s part of what we were trying to get at in titling our festival James Baldwin, This Time! We can't wait to see the sorts of discourses it will spark.” The 2014 Live Ideas Festival, James Baldwin, This Time! is being presented by New York Live Arts as part of The Year of James Baldwin in partnership with Harlem Stage and Columbia University School of the Arts Office of Community Outreach and Education. Other collaborators include: The New School and its Vera List Center for Art and Politics; the School of Writing; NYU; and others to be announced as the year progresses. Live Ideas is made possible by The Ford Foundation. Additional support is provided by New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, The Samuel M. Levy Family Foundation and Theatre Development Fund. Please see the descriptions and schedule below for complete program details. *Schedule in formation and subject to change.* Listing Information: Live Ideas James Baldwin, This Time! April 23 – 27, 2014 Single tickets and festival passes ($175) will go on sale to New York Live Arts members on January 27, 2014 and the general public on February 3, 2014. New York Live Arts Tickets: FREE - $60 T: 212-924-0077 | www.newyorklivearts.org 219 W 19th Street, New York, NY 10011 Box Office hours: Monday-Friday 1 - 9pm | Saturday-Sunday 12 - 8pm OVERVIEW OF EVENTS VISUAL ART INSTALLATIONS HANK WILLIS THOMAS (Video installation) This innovative video installation, A person is more important than anything else…, will be driven by the cadence and intonation of James Baldwin’s voice, for Baldwin was also an orator whose delivery was almost as forceful as his ideas. Artist Hank Willis Thomas will weave audio, images, and video together in a fluid- moving, digital stream of consciousness that connects Baldwin’s 20th century discourse with the concerns and urgencies of the 21st. In recent years Thomas’s career has been surging throughout the world; in New York City he is represented by Jack Shainman Gallery. Dates: Ongoing throughout the festival Times: Ongoing throughout the festival Tickets: FREE WALL MURAL OF NEW YORKER “LETTER FROM A REGION OF MY MIND” The November 1962 issue of The New Yorker magazine (in which the piece Letter From a Region of My Mind first appeared later to become the basis for Baldwin’s great book The Fire Next Time) will be reproduced as a mural by visual artist Samantha Holmes: the text, often a single streaming column, is flanked on all sides by advertisements incongruously hawking all manner of luxury goods. Dates: Ongoing throughout the festival Tickets: FREE READINGS, LECTURES, PANELS & CONVERSATIONS “JIMMY AT HIGH NOON” (A Series of Five Daily Readings) Presented in partnership with Columbia University School of the Arts, this noon-time series features poets, actors, musicians, essayists and scholars reading from a range of James Baldwin’s classics, as well as discussing his impact on their lives and thinking. Speakers include poet Nikky Finney; writer Darryl Pinckney; actors Jesse L. Martin and André De Shields; musician Vijay Iyer; and playwrights Suzan-Lori Parks and Marcus Gardley, among others to be announced at a later date. “Jimmy at High Noon” will be overseen by director Patricia McGregor, with dramaturgy by Columbia faculty member and Baldwin scholar Rich Blint. Dates: Every day, Wednesday April 23 - Sunday, April 27 Time: 12:00pm Tickets: FREE Location: New York Live Arts Studios BALDWIN’S CAPACIOUS IMAGINATION & INFLUENCE MacArthur Award winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks (Topdog/ Underdog and The Death of the Last Black Man in the Entire World) discusses her years as Baldwin’s student with Roberta Uno, former artistic director of New WORLD Theater which staged a ground-breaking Baldwin production. This conversation, moderated by Live Ideas curator Lawrence Weschler, will also feature playwright John Guare (Six Degrees of Separation and A Free Man of Color). Date: Wednesday, April 23 Time: 2:30pm Tickets: $15 Location: New York Live Arts Studios OPENING KEYNOTE CONVERSATION Featuring Bill T. Jones, renowned choreographer and Executive Artistic Director of New York Live Arts in conversation with visual artist and MacArthur Fellow, Carrie Mae Weems and celebrated novelist and essayist, Jamaica Kincaid (Autobiography of My Mother, Lucy, A Small Place). Approaching Baldwin from a range of disciplines, these highly accomplished cultural figures share Baldwin’s commitment to the necessary excavation of the dense, complex and contradictory history of the nation. From the stunning visual imagery of Weems, to the startlingly honest and demanding prose of Kincaid, this conversation reaches across genres to address issues of importance to Baldwin, but crucial for our own transformation-- this time! Date: Wednesday, April 23 Time: 8:00pm Tickets: $60 Location: New York Live Arts Theater BALDWIN & DELANEY Rachel Cohen, whose critically acclaimed A Chance Meeting braids a sequence of seminal encounters across American cultural history, including Baldwin’s with both Richard Avedon and Norman Mailer, will read from a third chapter, focusing on the young writer’s life-transforming encounter with the sublime painter Beauford Delaney, at the latter’s Greenwich Village apartment. Following her reading, Cohen will engage Diedra Harris-Kelley, Co-Director of the Romare Bearden Foundation and Baldwin and Delaney biographer David Leeming, in a conversation about Delaney’s enduring importance in Baldwin’s life. Date: Thursday, April 24 Time: 2:00pm Tickets: $10 Location: New York Live Arts Theater JAMES BALDWIN THIS TIME Newly appointed Counsel to Mayor DeBlasio, Maya Wiley moderates a conversation on what Baldwin might have made of everything from the burgeoning prison-industrial complex and the recent gutting of the Voter Rights Bill through the Barack Obama presidency.