KEITH ANTAR MASON

Keith Antar Mason is a playwright, poet, and performance artist. He writes, directs, and sometimes performs with the Hittite Empire, for which he is the Artistic Director and co-founding member. In addition to its own highly acclaimed repertory of work, the Hittite Empire has collaborated with communities around the United States and in the U.K. to create works that grow from the experiences of young Afrikan American and Afrikan Diasporic men between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five.

Keith Antar Mason has performed and has had his work performed internationally in London, Mexico City, and many cities in the U.S., including works commissioned for the Los Angeles Festival and the Serious Fun festival at Lincoln Center, and performances at the Alternative Performance Festival at Ex-Theresa in Mexico City, the national Black Arts festival, and the National Black Theater Festival. He has written and directed all of the Hittite Empire performance pieces from which is maintained an active repertory. The Hittites premiered the Anatomy of Deep Blue in September, 1996 in the Textuality Festival at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London. They collaborated with visual artist Albert Chong and sound artist Johnnie Coleman on a piece commissioned for the Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in November of 1996. The New World Theater at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst presented the highly acclaimed Underseige Stories during their 1996-1997 season. In July of 1997, the Hittite Empire opened the National Black Theater Festival in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, with a performance of The Harsh Reality of Toys. They performed Man in the Belly of a Slaveship at the artBLACKlive Celeb' at the Manchester Festival in Manchester, U.K., during England's Black History Month of October, 1997. Most recently, Keith Antar Mason and the Hittite Empire conducted a community residency and performed the Anatomy of Deep Blue at Out North Contemporary Art House in Anchorage, Alaska.

 

 

The Hittite Empire

 

 

The Barbara Mandingo Kelly Peace Poetry Award from the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation was recently awarded to Keith Antar Mason for his poem "lovers on ground zero". Current publication of his work includes: "Where do I want my theater performed?", Haight Ashberry Literary Journal; "a walk to the pacific", The Black Boy Pub and Other Stories: The Black Experience in High Wycombe, edited by Michael McMillan, Wycombe District Council, UK; "Friday Night", Catch the Fire, A Cross-Generational Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry, edited by Derrick I.M. Gilbert; "Pops and the New World Order", Volt Magazine of the Arts; and "Where do I want my theater performed?" in Mind Purge. The award winning performance piece "...for black boys who have considered homicide when the streets were too much..." was published in Colored Contradictions: An Anthology of Contemporary African American Plays, edited by Harry Elam. His play "Comparative Pain and the Safe Word" appeared in PLAZM Magazine; and "Revisionist Examination" was published in Let's Get It On/The Politics of Black Performance, Bay Press, Seattle.

Keith Antar Mason has written and performed with the spoken word group Black Madrid of the New Alliance Records label. He is a recipient of the Brody Arts Fellowship in the Performing Arts and the Midwest Black Playwrights Award. Keith Antar Mason was a participant of the National Black Theater Summit "On Golden Pond" in Hanover, New Hampshire, which took place in March, 1998.

 

The Hittite Empire