Showing posts with label Idris Goodwin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Idris Goodwin. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Stage Management
I moved to
We have just finished our tech weekend and are jumping into tech/opening week. Tech week is my favorite week...I get to be "hands on" with the production, helping to pull all the pieces together and watch it take shape. This collaberation, has been extremely rewarding for me - to work with such talented individuals and produce something that can cause change, it's a rarity (though not at Remy Bumppo :).
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
TECH WEEKEND
Well the weekend was grueling. A ten hour tech on Saturday and another 5 hours on Sunday, but it was well worth it. The show is in great shape, the lights and sound adding a great deal of color, vibrancy and immediacy to the production. It’s great working with sound expert Nick Keenan, and lighting wizz Stephanette. Under the guiding eye of stage manager Amy Bertacini and director Nick Sandys, tech weekend was unusually relaxed but efficient at the same time.
As for the performers, we are getting a little antsy, ready to put this show up in front of an audience! I can’t believe opening is so soon, and the nervous energy is getting the better of me! I am ready!
Shameless plug: Sunday evening Kelly and I will be at the Green Mill’s Uptown Poetry Slam this Sunday the 15th of March.
Then catch us at Café Mestizo Wednesday 18th March.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Idris Goodwin talks about American Ethnic Rehearsal
Weds Feb.25We are butchering Ol man River. No, we aren't doing showboat but elements of the song appear. (Did I just give away something important?) I feel Paul Robeson's spirit in the room and he is vomiting.......even that sounds better than our poor rendition of the song.
Nick knows a lot about how to stage violence (and quite possibly off stage violence). I have begun to ask him about random scenes in movies and plays to see if he knows how they were done. I have yet to stump him. I need to go into my blaxploitation film grab bag. Lets see if he knows how they did the fight scenes in Black Belt Jones! There is no physical violence in our show though nunchucks are referenced - the word BOMB shows up quite a bit as well.
Amy, our stage manager, typically reels our focus back in when we go off on tangents about movies and medieval weaponry (that's all Nick). Though she did join in a conversation about the plays of Martin McDonagh.
Usman and Kelly are very good actors in addition to writers. I have such regard for the craft of acting. Acting is hard. It looks so easy because that's the point - to do it so well it looks natural and effortless. But its very very hard. As a spoken word performer I typically perform the words and not the moment as Kelly would say. I know, I know, if it wasn't hard everyone would do it. I know I should be grateful and I am grateful.....I'm just sayin.....for me spoken word is fun, acting is work. Don't tell anyone. I got a reputation to maintain. I'm just sayin....
The themes of the show aside, this fusion (or maybe I can say exploration) of different performance styles is what has become the most interesting for me. collage, monologue, song, sketch, commentary, commentary, commentary - the specificity of current experience - the sweeping indictments - the odes - the pace that we move from piece to piece - the windows into culture - the celebration of both community and self - this feels like just the beginning of what is possible for us nerdy hip hop kids with aspirations for the stage.
idris goodwin
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Director's Take- HipHopHopeLand
Today the show started to really take shape and find its direction--which is good for me, as director! As we began to put sections together and see how they fit, I realised that the initial sections that we had created early on were not quite making sense--which makes sense! As our three intrepid writers are still writing, and have responded to their recent experiences and feelings (Usman's return to his Pakistani homeland, Kelly's response to current hiphop music), the shows pieces begin to change tone and to crossfade/mix with each other in different combinations. Now a section on television can be divided into two, one half on role models and creation myths, a second on news and its censorship of experience. This devlopment then changes the section before, and changes where the comedy and lightness needs to be. So this process, so alive and so exciting, just took another step into scary territory, since I am far more comfortable, or expereinced at least, in carving up Shakespeare's text, than I am in analyzing Idris', Kelly's, and Usman's soft rhymes, riffs, ragings--but I love their passion, their opinions, and their words. This is a wild ride into hiphophopeland, and today the show just grew another super power!
Nick
Friday, January 9, 2009
Idris Goodwin talks...
So I guess we gotta talk about Obama…..again.
I’m not saying I wasn’t as excited as you. I’m not saying it’s not historic. I’m just saying I didn’t ask to get involved.
From the moment Obama accepted his nomination the strangest thing happened. Middle-aged white people began stopping me at random in the street, at the grocery store, while hiking, to engage in racial dialogue.
I should be excited by this - when I was coming up the only people interested in public conversations about race were those who had been victims of racism. By that I mean, up until Obama ran, white people tended to shy away from talking with me about race in a non-p.c., I-don’t-see-color kind of way (except of course for that whole OJ thing).
So it was jarring when grown, respectable, upstanding baby boomers began giving me goofy eyes, knowing nods, awkwardly shifting gears from “nice weather we’re’ having” to trips down memory lane: the 60’s when hands interlocked and Motown bridged the gaps and on and on and on and on.
It got real deep when I worked this summer at an outdoor newsstand in downtown Santa Fe, NM, which is incidentally where east coast leftists escape for retirement and death. It’s the sort of place where every store, restaurant and street has a Spanish or Native American name, yet all the Spanish speaking and Native American people are nowhere in sight.
And it should come as no surprise that while Santa Fe has an abundance of sunlight and parking spots, it is desperately lacking in the 31-year-old black guy department.
You get what I’m saying.
So there I was, sitting on a busy Santa Fe street in front of rows and rows of magazines featuring everyone’s favorite brown boy on the cover. I was an easy target.
The day after Obama won the primary someone yelled from across the street -- maybe 20 feet away -- “I bet you’re happy!”
Considering their logic they should have been happy when McCain won his respective primary. After all he is old, white and rich. Of course I never said that. I am no agitator.
I didn’t even respond to the woman who shook her head conspiratorially, “Can you believe he picked Biden? Always gotta shoulder up with the white man, right?”
It was getting out of control.
I couldn’t wait for the whole thing to hurry up and just get decided already. Then the tokenism would stop and things could back to the way they were. You know, when we would tip toe gingerly around the old race maypole, talk color with our skin-folk. It was hard enough for me to deal with my own day-to-day trials without having to participate – without having to be the sounding board for the wish fulfillment and redemption of the older generation.
I was sure that when it was over the dust would settle. But then he won. And it dawned on me, I’ve got four more years of this. Maybe eight.
So the night of Nov.4th, after Obama’s acceptance speech, after the bells and whistles and good tidings of joy, I found myself conflicted, weighing the consequences. Reflecting on how now everyone will assume that racism and it’s legacy is a thing of the past.
Suddenly, inexplicably, my great great great grandfather appeared beside me on the couch. Obama’s speech still hanging in the air, the ghost of my grandfather to my right, and me in-between.
Of course I immediately apologized for not keeping in better touch with him. He told me to shove my apology, then proceeded to remind me that in his day it was not only Illegal for black people to vote but it was illegal for black people to be people. In his day the house slave was allotted maybe 15 minutes for dreaming, but his dreams were confined to that of better ways to serve his or her master.
He continued on and on and on like the ghosts of our great great great grandfather’s tend to do, reminding me of all the privileges I now enjoy and that the last thing I should be concerned about is white people wanting to talk to me in a positive way about a black man that they aren’t interested in lynching or betting on to win the superbowl.
And with that, he was gone. So were my petty annoyances. I now accept my role in Obama’s unofficial cabinet. In fact, I welcome all testimonials, opinions and cash donations. (The last thing I’d want to do is come off rude.)
So let’s talk about race, America.
Yes, this extraordinary biracial politician (that everyone calls black; see the one drop rule) defeated the candidate of the crippled Republican Party. Does this signal the dawn of a post racial America? For those who answered yes, you are a sad and hilarious example of irony, like low-fat junk food.
Racism is a disease. It’s the AIDS virus of the “isms.” It’s responsible for countless deaths, deferred dreams, horrific atrocities. I don’t know if any of you have read Frederick Douglas, but homeboy could’ve talked circles around Obama and led our country in his sleep, though I doubt he could have raised the necessary funds at the time. Why? Racism. It’s ingrained, woven tightly into the fabric of our country. It’s the reason I am an American citizen and have the last name Goodwin. It’s the reason why initially we didn’t think Obama had a Lobster’s chance in boiling water. It’s what prompted someone in Delaware to deface Obama-Biden campaign posters with KKK.
You could say racism is our national pastime.
You could say America is Dr. Frankenstein and racism is its monster – but we can’t scare it with fire-lit torches.
Do I think things are better? Of course. When my parents entered their teens, Jim Crow laws were still in effect. However, my black and brown cohorts continue to be profiled by state troopers and affluent liberals alike. This country is ripe with generations of brown-skinned people for whom racism has robbed of the ability to dream, to actualize, to even imagine being the president of the student council let alone the United States of America.
To suggest that racism is over because the browner guy won the game underestimates the weight and power of its legacy and insults its victims.
I’m not saying I wasn’t as excited as you. I’m not saying it’s not historic. I’m just saying I didn’t ask to get involved.
From the moment Obama accepted his nomination the strangest thing happened. Middle-aged white people began stopping me at random in the street, at the grocery store, while hiking, to engage in racial dialogue.
I should be excited by this - when I was coming up the only people interested in public conversations about race were those who had been victims of racism. By that I mean, up until Obama ran, white people tended to shy away from talking with me about race in a non-p.c., I-don’t-see-color kind of way (except of course for that whole OJ thing).
So it was jarring when grown, respectable, upstanding baby boomers began giving me goofy eyes, knowing nods, awkwardly shifting gears from “nice weather we’re’ having” to trips down memory lane: the 60’s when hands interlocked and Motown bridged the gaps and on and on and on and on.
It got real deep when I worked this summer at an outdoor newsstand in downtown Santa Fe, NM, which is incidentally where east coast leftists escape for retirement and death. It’s the sort of place where every store, restaurant and street has a Spanish or Native American name, yet all the Spanish speaking and Native American people are nowhere in sight.
And it should come as no surprise that while Santa Fe has an abundance of sunlight and parking spots, it is desperately lacking in the 31-year-old black guy department.
You get what I’m saying.
So there I was, sitting on a busy Santa Fe street in front of rows and rows of magazines featuring everyone’s favorite brown boy on the cover. I was an easy target.
The day after Obama won the primary someone yelled from across the street -- maybe 20 feet away -- “I bet you’re happy!”
Considering their logic they should have been happy when McCain won his respective primary. After all he is old, white and rich. Of course I never said that. I am no agitator.
I didn’t even respond to the woman who shook her head conspiratorially, “Can you believe he picked Biden? Always gotta shoulder up with the white man, right?”
It was getting out of control.
I couldn’t wait for the whole thing to hurry up and just get decided already. Then the tokenism would stop and things could back to the way they were. You know, when we would tip toe gingerly around the old race maypole, talk color with our skin-folk. It was hard enough for me to deal with my own day-to-day trials without having to participate – without having to be the sounding board for the wish fulfillment and redemption of the older generation.
I was sure that when it was over the dust would settle. But then he won. And it dawned on me, I’ve got four more years of this. Maybe eight.
So the night of Nov.4th, after Obama’s acceptance speech, after the bells and whistles and good tidings of joy, I found myself conflicted, weighing the consequences. Reflecting on how now everyone will assume that racism and it’s legacy is a thing of the past.
Suddenly, inexplicably, my great great great grandfather appeared beside me on the couch. Obama’s speech still hanging in the air, the ghost of my grandfather to my right, and me in-between.
Of course I immediately apologized for not keeping in better touch with him. He told me to shove my apology, then proceeded to remind me that in his day it was not only Illegal for black people to vote but it was illegal for black people to be people. In his day the house slave was allotted maybe 15 minutes for dreaming, but his dreams were confined to that of better ways to serve his or her master.
He continued on and on and on like the ghosts of our great great great grandfather’s tend to do, reminding me of all the privileges I now enjoy and that the last thing I should be concerned about is white people wanting to talk to me in a positive way about a black man that they aren’t interested in lynching or betting on to win the superbowl.
And with that, he was gone. So were my petty annoyances. I now accept my role in Obama’s unofficial cabinet. In fact, I welcome all testimonials, opinions and cash donations. (The last thing I’d want to do is come off rude.)
So let’s talk about race, America.
Yes, this extraordinary biracial politician (that everyone calls black; see the one drop rule) defeated the candidate of the crippled Republican Party. Does this signal the dawn of a post racial America? For those who answered yes, you are a sad and hilarious example of irony, like low-fat junk food.
Racism is a disease. It’s the AIDS virus of the “isms.” It’s responsible for countless deaths, deferred dreams, horrific atrocities. I don’t know if any of you have read Frederick Douglas, but homeboy could’ve talked circles around Obama and led our country in his sleep, though I doubt he could have raised the necessary funds at the time. Why? Racism. It’s ingrained, woven tightly into the fabric of our country. It’s the reason I am an American citizen and have the last name Goodwin. It’s the reason why initially we didn’t think Obama had a Lobster’s chance in boiling water. It’s what prompted someone in Delaware to deface Obama-Biden campaign posters with KKK.
You could say racism is our national pastime.
You could say America is Dr. Frankenstein and racism is its monster – but we can’t scare it with fire-lit torches.
Do I think things are better? Of course. When my parents entered their teens, Jim Crow laws were still in effect. However, my black and brown cohorts continue to be profiled by state troopers and affluent liberals alike. This country is ripe with generations of brown-skinned people for whom racism has robbed of the ability to dream, to actualize, to even imagine being the president of the student council let alone the United States of America.
To suggest that racism is over because the browner guy won the game underestimates the weight and power of its legacy and insults its victims.
Monday, December 8, 2008
Remy Bumppo's thinkTank "American Ethnic"
This spring, Remy Bumppo's thinkTank returns for its third year. thinkTank features dramatic works with a focus on provoking timely conversation about a social, political or economic issue in which Chicago citizens have a stake.
We are pleased to announce the cast and topic of American Ethnic - the third annual production of thinkTank. This year's presentation features three nationally recognized spoken word artists - Idris Goodwin, Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai, and Usman Ally - who will collaborate on an original work combining hip-hop, spoken word and theater aesthetics to examine the mass media's role in perpetuating cultural norms surrounding race and gender. This world premiere production will be directed by Nick Sandys.
We are pleased to announce the cast and topic of American Ethnic - the third annual production of thinkTank. This year's presentation features three nationally recognized spoken word artists - Idris Goodwin, Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai, and Usman Ally - who will collaborate on an original work combining hip-hop, spoken word and theater aesthetics to examine the mass media's role in perpetuating cultural norms surrounding race and gender. This world premiere production will be directed by Nick Sandys.
Tickets go on sale in January. http://www.remybumppo.org/
Click here for videos, podcasts, and more.
Idris Goodwin is an award winning hip hop playwright, break beat poet, recording artist and teacher committed to making work that incites, inspires, and engages. The National Endowment for the Arts awarded Idris a Playwright-in-Residence grant to explore hip-hop aesthetics in theater. Idris' break beat poetry was featured on HBO's "Def Poetry Jam" as well as the Spoken Word Revolution Redux Anthology. Idris frequently teaches and lectures at institutions across the country on themes of art and activism.
Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai is a Chicago-born, Brooklyn-based, Chinese Taiwanese American spoken word artist who has given over 275 performances worldwide in notable venues like the Nuyorican Poets Café, House of Blues, Apollo Theater in Harlem, Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, and three seasons on HBO's "Def Poetry Jam." Current projects include her recently released CD "Infinity Breaks" and her solo show "The Grieving Room."
Usman Ally A Pakistani national who was born and raised in Southern and Eastern Africa for 18 years, Usman made his Chicago theatre debut in Tranquility Woods at Steppenwolf Theater Company. His one man show Public Enemy was featured in Remy Bumppo's thinkTank last season. He has appeared in productions at Victory Gardens Theater, Lookingglass Theatre, and A Red Orchid Theatre. He is founder of One Nation, the first Hip Hop Theatre troupe at University of Florida.
Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai is a Chicago-born, Brooklyn-based, Chinese Taiwanese American spoken word artist who has given over 275 performances worldwide in notable venues like the Nuyorican Poets Café, House of Blues, Apollo Theater in Harlem, Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, and three seasons on HBO's "Def Poetry Jam." Current projects include her recently released CD "Infinity Breaks" and her solo show "The Grieving Room."
Usman Ally A Pakistani national who was born and raised in Southern and Eastern Africa for 18 years, Usman made his Chicago theatre debut in Tranquility Woods at Steppenwolf Theater Company. His one man show Public Enemy was featured in Remy Bumppo's thinkTank last season. He has appeared in productions at Victory Gardens Theater, Lookingglass Theatre, and A Red Orchid Theatre. He is founder of One Nation, the first Hip Hop Theatre troupe at University of Florida.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
