05/19/04

Taper,Too
The Future of Theatre in Los Angeles at the Ivy Substation, downtown Culver City
more information

ÓIt's the performers -- FIERCE, FUNNY AND BITINGLY INTELLIGENT -- who keep your toes tapping and your heart in your mouth.Ó Ð F. Kathleen Foley The Los Angeles Times

Universes' SLANGUAGE
Written by Universes
Mildred Ruiz, Steven Sapp, Gamal Abdel Chasten, Flaco Navaja and Lemon

Performed by Steven Sapp, Mildren Ruiz, Gamal Abdel Chasten, Dominic Colon, and Ninja

Developed and Directed by Jo Bonney

West Coast Premiere

Set Designed by Yael Pardess
Lighting Design by Christopher Akerlind
Sound Designed by Darron L. West

May 2 - 23, 2004

The joyful noise you hear is jazz riffs, blues, hip-hop politics, down home blues, and Spanish boleros.Ê Universes takes you on a theatrical journey through spoken word, song and movement as they deliver a cityÕs beat with iambic heat. "Those who have previously dismissed rap and hip-hop as bastardized and anti-intellectual will find 'Slanguage' a captivating glimpse of a much-maligned movement."
- Los Angeles Times,
May 8, 2004

VECINOS NIGHT MAY 19 PERFORMANCE, RECEPTION, MEET THE PERFORMERS CHECK IT OUT!
Find out more about Universes.

The Poetry of Slang
By Gamal A. Chasten, Lemon, Flaco Navaja, Mildred Ruiz and Steven Sapp

Universes creates work that is suitable for anyone who lives life. We did not set out to create theatre for segregated audiences. We set out to create theatre for the older houses and their subscriber bases as well as for the new faces that are promisingly beginning to flood into theatre seats. We did not 'age out' audiences, because we communicate best through a combination of inherited and reinvented voices. We create work with an audience-development sensibility, where drastically different persons can sit side by side and share similar experiences, receiving a coded piece of themselves in the process. By offering delicately selected diversified samples of language, we invite audiences of all generations and cultural backgrounds to join us, while remaining true to our Afro-Latin-hip-hoppin' voices. Through slang, we search and comb the gamut of language and culture, which make us who we are first and foremost: poets, a necessary label by trade.

Universes was not put together by a 'making of the band' type of exploration, nor was it designed to fit a United Colors of Benetton ad. Universes created itself from the natural relationship born of friends and artists living in the same situations, working in the same circles, hitting on the same open-mike venues, writing with the same sensibilities. It was only natural for the five core members of Universes to come together as a community, one at a time.

We all met in the New York poetry scene Ð hitting at opening mikes around the city was the name of our game. Varying in age range, ethnic backgrounds and experiences, each member of the troupe brings a different element of style to create five collaborating Universes in one very real world. Steven is the voice of jazz and literary style from the '70s to now; Mildred is the voice of cultural hybridity, mixing Spanish boleros with gospel, the blues and contemporary sounds and images; Gamal is "the bottom," his roots reaching down into lyricism and music; Flaco, an old soul embedded in the young voice of salsa and NuYorican poetry; and Lemon, the voice that grinds through the streets of our reality, our urbanity. And, in this way, we found that "this ensemble would echo the exodus from exaggerated Ebonics to an eclectic experiment examining the everyday expression."

In Slanguage, we promise to take you through what Lawrence Van Gelder of the New York Times described as:

...the underground rattlers, where the beggar, the battery seller and the religious rile the riders; to the streets, where walking is attitude; and to the tenements, where domestic disputes leave babies dead. But God is here, too, and Ali and Jack Kerouac and the great Puerto Rican migration and Dr. Seuss; so along with the politics of dislocation and the problems of assimilation and rich and poorer neighborhoods and classrooms come fun and a feverish joy of language. That joy, Van Gelder aptly noted, is "expressed in rap and riffs and gospel and bluesy laments, among other poetic forms."

Welcome to our Universe and the language from which we are born. Where we reclaim our inherited voices and remix them with our own.

05/19/04

Mark Taper Forum

Blacksmyths Theatre Lab Presents
Live from the Front:
Petrol and Protein
Written and Performed by
Jerry Quickley

Directed by Brian Freeman
Two Performances Only
May 17 & 24, 2004, 8PM
more information

Poet/raconteur Jerry Quickley has just returned from Iraq for the second time this year.Ê Doing independent reporting of the real deal from a hip-hop perspective, this 'B-boy in Baghdad' offers up a raw and precise evening.Ê From the host of KPFK's Beneath The Surface and one of the stars of HBO's DEF Poetry Jam.

Un-embedded and uncensored, hip-hop spoken word artist and political activist turned unlikely war-correspondent Jerry Quickley watched with the rest of America as the military and media ramped up for war with Iraq.Ê He asked himself, "Where are the Iraqi people?"Ê In the days before "shock and awe," Quickley went to meet the people of Baghdad and cover the peace movement for KPFK Radio.Ê He brings that unique insight to "Live From The Front: Petrol and Protein," which combines music, poetry, video and powerful performance style to tell the story of his travels to, and ultimate expulsion from, Iraq.Ê