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Monday, June 29, 2015

Sunday, June 28, 2015

Your witness wanted: Attend Fire & Ink this fall.




Author Randall Kenan
will be the keynote speaker
at Fire & Ink, IV in Detroit.

October 8-11, Detroit, MI


"Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have."
—James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
Keynote speaker Randall Kenan is the author of a novel, A Visitation of Spirits; two works of non-fiction, Walking on Water: Black American Lives at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century and The Fire This Time; and a collection of stories, Let the Dead Bury Their Dead. He edited and wrote the introduction for The Cross of Redemption: The Uncollected Writings of James Baldwin. Among his awards are a Guggenheim Fellowship, the North Carolina Award, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Rome Prize. He is a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Fire & Ink, Incorporated

Fire & Ink IV: Witness is a writers festival that will address the urgent question of what it means to bear witness as LGBTQ and SGL writers of African descent and heritage in the 21st century. Merriam-Webster offers these definitions of "witness": One that gives evidence. One who is present at an event and can say that it happened. One who testifies in a cause. An attestation of fact. One who has personal knowledge of something. Public affirmation by word or example of usually religious faith or conviction. We invite Black LGBTQ and SGL writers and artists to assay their own definitions of witness.

Fire & Ink is a nonprofit organization devoted to increasing the understanding, visibility and awareness of the works of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender writers of African descent and heritage.

Preview another festive year of Bessies

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The Bessie Awards Steering Committee--honoring outstanding work in New York City's diverse dance field--extends a special invitation to a cocktail reception and presentation of the 2015 award for Emerging Choreographer and the Juried Bessie Award. In additional, all Bessie Award nominations for 2015 will be announced at this essential event.

Wednesday, July 15

Cocktail reception 5-6pm*
Announcements and awards 6-7pm

Studio C at
280 Broadway (enter at 53 Chambers Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)



Outstanding Emerging Choreographer: On July 6, the nominees for Outstanding Emerging Choreographer will be announced online at this link.

Juried Bessie Award:  The 2015 Bessie Jury includes award-winning dance artists Susan Marshall, Reggie Wilson, and Shen Wei. The honored dance maker will tour his or her work to one or more regional theaters.

2015 Bessie Awards Steering Committee:

Cora Cahan, Beverly D’Anne, Lane Harwell, Judy Hussie-Taylor, Stanford Makishi, Carla Peterson, Laurie Uprichard and Martin Wechsler

Produced in partnership with 

Tuesday, June 2, 2015

Stew says, "Don't blame James Baldwin...."

Stew
(photo: Susan Rosenberg Jones)

James Baldwin had nothing to do with it. Or so we're told.

Even so, he's all over Notes of a Native Song, repeatedly referenced in words and video images, popping up in comically surprising places that will have you double-checking your old vinyl albums because...well, wait a minute...!?!

Harlem Stage's 14-month Year of James Baldwin goes out boldly this week with a commissioned premiere by Stew, star and Tony-winning co-creator of Passing Strange. The new 75-minute work invites us to Baldwin Country, a place where Stew will pair Baldwin's "social remedies" with his own "anti-social questions." For it is the rockin' poet's quest to rescue "Harlem's Bard" from what Stew considers to be our selective, safe memories of the provocative writer.

James Baldwin? Safe? Respectable? Hmmm.

Well, all anti-social questions aside, Stew himself strikes me as anything but safe in his wry, incisive poetry, his madly eclectic, often gorgeous music (co-composed with Heidi Rodewald), his singing, his very being. Passionate, insistent, occasionally snide, yet capable of disarming beauty, Stew can make you grin one minute and the next, feel a chill race up your chakras.

Text/music/guitars/singing: Stew
Bass/guitars/Moog: Heidi Rodewald
Percussion: Urbano Sanchez
Woodwinds: Mike McGinnis
Piano: Art Terry
Lighting: K. J. Hardy
Video design: Joan Grossman

Tickets are almost gone. Connect with Harlem Stage here for shows Wednesday through Saturday, 7:30pm and Saturday and Sunday matinees, 2pm.

Harlem Stage Gatehouse
150 Convent Avenue (at 135th Street), Manhattan
(map/directions)