August 5-6, 2009 Bring the Beat Back: An Apocalyptist Episode
Directed by Christopher Burris
Featuring: Lee Avant, Vandit Bhatt, Jerome Braggs, Shydel James*,
Fatima Quander*, Johnny Ramey, and Penni Danielle Tinsley* *Appears courtsey of Actors Equity Association
StoryCorps Listening Salon @ 7PM
Performance @ 730PM
Talk back hosts!
8/5: Sheree Renee Thomas
Editor of Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora
8/6: Kenyon Farrow
Contributor, Spirited: Affirming the Soul and Black Gay/Lesbian Identity
Fire! New Play Play Festival 2009
Produced by Freedom Train Productions
138 S. Oxford Street [directions]
BAM Cultural District in Fort Greene, Brooklyn
Tru Believers know the Musicship Megarhythmic is on its way to save them from the End of the World, but you can’t get on if you can’t get down, and somebody done stole the beat. Trudy thinks her boy-crazed brother may be the troublemaker in question. And unless she can literally “straighten things out” between her brother and his latest love, the Musicship may just groove on by without them. Reaching into a transcendental realm of underground dance music, Bring the Beat Back is an experimental work of music-drama.
Derek is a resident playwright at Freedom Train Productions. Aurin Squire, Director of New Play Development, and guest artists began facilitating intensive theatre workshops in March. Offstage Forums 2009, critical discussions inspired by their current work in development, preceded the festival. In August Artistic & Managing Director Andre Lancaster released a festival statement around the state of artist economies.
Derek on P-Funk, Octavia Butler, and His Approach to Sci-Fi
This clip features Resident Playwright Derek Lee McPhatter and Board Member Bryan E. Glover. It was produced by Freedom Train Productions, with interviews recorded by StoryCorps, a national initiative to record and collect stories of everyday people: www.storycorps.org.
Come early and hear the full interview during the StoryCorps Listening Salon!
About the Playwright
Derek Lee McPhatter is thrilled to take part in Freedom Train Productions. Originally from Pickerington Ohio, he has lived in Atlanta and Japan and calls Harlem home. Derek’s accomplishments include publications in the journals Anamesa and Flash Fantastic, and the Encyclopedia of African American Culture and History. He is the co-author of It Goes Unsaid, the signature show for Under the Spell Productions. He was a quarterfinalist in L. Ron Hubbard’s Writer’s of the Future Contest, and is a member of the Harlem Arts Alliance and the Speculative Literature Foundation. He holds degrees from Morehouse College and NYU, where he completed his master’s thesis—Let the Kids Say Amen: Black Gay Spaces and the Hybridity of Gospel House Music. By days, Derek works at the Apollo Theater and hosts the 2009 Apollo Salon Series, a works-in-development program presented weekends in April. He invites you to check out his blog: www.itsdmcp.blogspot.com for more.
