I am very grateful to have recently received a 2008 U.S.A. Artists Fellowship. This prestigious award goes to 50 artist per year who are nationally recognized as the finest living artists in their respective field. The grant gives $50,000 in unrestricted funds to better and further enhance the artist’s creativity. I am so thankful to [...]
It’s official! I will be traveling with 8 other amazing theatre artists to the village of Tengeru in Tanzania to conduct a three-week theatre intensive with a beautiful group of Tanzanian students. This will be my second trip to Africa. Last year I was honored to go on a two-week Department of State sponsored tour [...]
Here’s part of the band jammin’ out on me and Justin Ellington’s original funk song “Leave.” On bass is Namir Smallwood in the role of DP, on the stairs is the very gifted Traci Allen as Ruby, and belting out the soulful lead vocals is Keith Hale as Big Ced’.
Five Fingers of Funk:
Book and lyrics by [...]
Here’s a photo from the Minneapolis production. It features the fabulous Edwin Lee Gibson (who also played Oedipus in The Seven). Here he is as Boogie Jones, the funk superstar that every aspiring musician wants to groove with!
This is an exciting new project that I’m collaborating on with my man Mohammed Bilal at 24/7 town hall.org. It’s our take on Dear Abby I guess-maybe you have a question you’d like to ask the Mighty O.S.R.? (Which stands for Old School Rapper of course)-In any case, as the O.S.R. would say-Stay Fresh!
Direct link [...]
This is a clip of me speaking with high school students in Camden New Jersey. Camden is considered one of the most challenging places to grow up as far as poverty levels and what not, yet these young folks were very much alive and focussed in ways that were truly inspiring. I taught them, but learned [...]
Part 2 in the video series on my residence at BRT. What I’m trying to do here is get the students more comfortable with the idea of movement. Once they became comfortable with moving to music within the safety of a group setting, I then encouraged them to create from movement a physical vocabulary for [...]
Often times, a regional theatre or University will have me in residence, doing a variety of activities in order to help enhance and empower the community or communities that they represent.
Sometimes, this may take the shape of me working with a select group of participants to develop an original piece of theatre that uniquely reflects [...]
