THE LIVING WORD PROJECT FRI—SAT NOV 18—19 8PM SUN NOV 20 5PM YBCA THEATER YBCA.ORG #PEHLOTAH Produced by: When Marc Bamuthi Joseph first told me about THE LESLIE AND MERLE RABINE 2016–17 PERFORMANCE SEASON A NOTE /peh-LO-tah/, he didn’t start by describing a multidisciplinary performance project. Instead, FROM THE he described the moments in his own life EXECUTIVE when he feels free – weightless, without race, incredibly alive. He talked about feeling this DIRECTOR freedom when dancing and also right at the moment that his own body, positioned just perfectly, slices the soccer ball past the goalie and lands it squarely in the net. The feeling of freedom . Bamuthi’s work – from Youth Speaks and the Living Word Project to his organizational home at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts – has certainly been about creating these moments not just for himself but also for all of us. No matter which role he is playing – educator, curator, poet, or performer - he is building an ecosystem and he is “freeing” us to ask the questions, turn over the stones, confront the demons, imagine the possibilities. /peh-LO-tah/ centers on the question what does freedom feel like? At the same time, YBCA – through the YBCA Fellows program – is asking the related question can we design freedom? This is not convenient or coincidental rather it Photo by Jon Lowenstein is an intentional effort to bring creative people of all kinds together in pursuit of interrogation that will lead to cultural shift. /peh-LO-tah/ At the time of this writing, we don’t know who A FUTBOL-FRAMED FREEDOM SUITE... Performed by The Living Word Project: will win the national election but we do know Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Amara Tabor- that, regardless, we are a perilously divided CONCEIVED AND WRITTEN BY Smith, Tommy Shepherd, Traci Tolmaire, country and that fewer and fewer people live MARC BAMUTHI JOSEPH and Yaw Agyeman a life that is free – free from fear of violence, free from worrying about where the next DEVELOPED WITH AND DIRECTED BY The company wishes to thank our meal will come from, free from the tyranny of MICHAEL JOHN GARCÉS ancestors, our families, and our racism, free from the all-too-real fear that our professional colleagues for their babies will not survive the day. At YBCA, we CHOREOGRAPHY BY STACEY PRINTZ inspiration and support. The author follow the artists who pave the way, the ones wishes to thank Christine Marie, Paul Turbiak, Catherine Adell, Brittney who inspire us to confront what is wrong and Produced by Leeanne Williams, Corrie Besse, and imagine and reach for what is right. MAPP International Productions TaiRecka Glover for their work on the development of this project. Much On behalf of YBCA, I am immensely proud Scenic and video design: David Szlasa love to Erik Mayo for your unbridled to bring the very first performances of Lighting design: Tom Ontiveros support and facilitation, and to Deborah /peh-LO-tah/ to San Francisco and to Sound design: Robert Kaplowitz Cullinan and the staff of YBCA for your the world. Composer: Tommy Shepherd understanding and permission. Costume design: Meghan Healey Warmly, Photography and film: Joan Osato This piece is dedicated to Diana Cohn, Production manager: Josh Johnson a beacon of belief on our path, without DEBORAH CULLINAN Sound designer: Zachary McKenna whom this work quite literally could not CEO of YERBA BUENA Stage management: Amanda Novoa have been made. CENTER FOR THE ARTS 2 3 ARTIST PROFILES on the faculty for fifteen years. She has also taught her hybrid contemporary- MARC BAMUTHI JOSEPH is an inaugural jazz technique across the United States recipient of the United States Artists and annually in Europe. Her company has Rockefeller Fellowship, the winner of performed in San Francisco for fifteen the 2011 Alpert Award in Theater, and years, and has toured across the country an inaugural recipient of the Doris Duke and internationally in Russia, Lithuania, Performing Artist Award. He has served as Ireland, the Virgin Islands, and Mexico. Her an advisor and panelist for the Rockefeller show Hover Space inspired one reviewer to MAP Fund, the PEW Charitable Trust, and say, “With a talented cast, unique concept the Zellerbach Family Fund, among other and inventive movement, Hover Space is a national philanthropies. He is the founding slam dunk.” Printz has also choreographed program director of the exemplary Aaron Davidman’s Wrestling Jerusalem, nonprofit Youth Speaks, and a cofounder Sarah Shourd’s The Box, and Marc Bamuthi of Life Is Living, a national series of Joseph’s internationally recognized works one-day festivals designed to activate Scourge, the break/s, and red, black and under-resourced parks through hip-hop GREEN (a blues). Printzdance.org arts and focused environmental actions. Joseph recently premiered the Creative DAVID SZLASA is a media, video, and Time commission Black Joy in the Hour of public art designer. His work spans Chaos in New York’s Central Park, and is performance, video, public art, and social currently completing a new work with Bill practice. He is a recipient of the Gerbode T. Jones for the Philadelphia Opera. He is Award, a Kenneth Rainin Foundation NEW Chief of Program and Pedagogy at YBCA. Program grant, a CCI Investing in Artists His evening-length piece /peh-LO-tah/ grant, a Future Aesthetics Artist Award, a has been commissioned by the Kennedy Zellerbach grant, a Light Artists in Dance Center, the Museum of Contemporary Art Award, a CA$H grant, a Siff grant, and Chicago, and the Guggenheim Museum. commissions from the National Science Foundation / UC Berkeley, Triangle Lab, MICHAEL JOHN GARCÉS previously the Contemporary Jewish Museum, collaborated with Marc Bamuthi Joseph 3200 Stories, the San Francisco Arts on red, black and GREEN (a blues) and Commission, and YBCA. Szlasa holds a Marc Bamuthi Joseph photo by John Coyne the break/s. His directing credits in San BFA in theater from NYU Tisch School of Francisco include Wrestling Jerusalem by the Arts and an MA in integrations of new Aaron Davidman (Intersection for the Arts) media and performance from NYU Gallatin and The Box by Sarah Shourd (Z Space). School of Interdisciplinary Studies. His PROGRAM OVERVIEW He is the artistic director of Cornerstone work has been presented worldwide in Theater in Los Angeles, where he recently galleries, theaters, and public spaces. From childhood through the recent past, I’ve been growing toward this new work. /peh-LO- directed Urban Rez by Larissa FastHorse His collaborators include Marc Bamuthi tah/ explores the ecology of egalitarianism played out inside the world’s game. It is a story and California: The Tempest by Alison Joseph, Sara Shelton Mann, Joanna of my body in its late summer years, and of the physics of a globally networked economy Carey. Other recent credits include District Haigood, Dohee Lee, Yuri Zhukov, Hope running in tandem with the fragile network of a dancer’s anatomy. It is a bet that that sweat Merchants by Aaron Posner at the Folger Mohr, Bill Shannon, Rennie Harris, Deb has currency to transition both narrative point of view and visual dimension. For my company Theatre in Washington, DC, and Seven Margolin, Myra Melford, and others. of collaborators, it is a structural experiment: physically demanding, visually deft, viscerally Spots on the Sun by Martín Zimmerman reaching, and linguistically twisted in hip-hop and hope. at the Theatre @ Boston Court. He is a TOM ONTIVEROS designs with light and member of the Woolly Mammoth Theater projection for theater, dance, and live Ultimately I’m intrigued by the elusive riddle of equality, and fascinated by the curiosity that Company. music. His design for Completeness was soccer is the only thing the entire planet can agree to do together. It is the official sport of nominated for best lighting design (2014) this spinning ball. My inquiry involves the joy of the game against the complexity of the Global STACEY PRINTZ, artistic director of by the Los Angeles Ticketholders Awards. South sites of the last two World Cups. It acknowledges that all conversations tied to ecology Printz Dance Project, is a Bay Area–based Other recent work includes Happy Days are also tied to democracy and economy. The work is sprung from the bliss of a goal scorer’s choreographer, dancer, and educator. She with Brooke Adams and Tony Shaloub run; it shares what one’s countrymen do after the ball beats the goalie, the closest thing graduated cum laude from the University (2014 Ticketholders Awards, Top 10 Revival going to freedom. of California, Irvine, with degrees in Productions) and ¡Figaro!: (90210) for sociology and dance, and she teaches for the LA Opera. Ontiveros collaborated with MARC BAMUTHI JOSEPH ACT’s MFA program and at Alonzo King’s Bob Balaban on the New York premiere of LINES Dance Center, where she has been The Exonerated (2003 Lucille Lortel and 5 Photo by Jon Lowenstein Drama Desk Awards for unique theatrical work has been heard on Broadway as well experience and the Outer Critics Circle as at Lincoln Center, the Public, NYTW, Award for outstanding off-Broadway play). MCC, Second Stage, the Vineyard, MTC, He is a three-time recipient of the Dean and just about every ninety-nine-seat and Goodman Award for lighting design and smaller venue in that city. was featured in San Francisco’s Callboard magazine. He designed the lighting for TOMMY SHEPHERD is an actor, playwright, the inaugural Tune-in Festival at the Park composer, educator, rapper, drummer, Avenue Armory in New York, curated by and beatboxer. He is a cofounder of Eighth Blackbird Ensemble and featuring the live hip-hop collective Felonious, a Bora Yoon, Paul Haas, Paul Fowler, resident company at Intersection for the Newspeak, Red Fish Blue Fish, John Luther Arts; Shepherd created the original music Adams, the Argento Chamber Ensemble, and performed in their recent project and others.