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RIGHT NOW! (A WeDaPeoples Cabaret)
Curated by Carl Hancock Rux
FEATURED ARTISTS:
Nona Hendryx
Reno
Nelson George
Ronny Drayton - guitar
Warren Mc Rae - bass
Trevor Gale - drums
Ettienne Standwick - keyboards
Keith Fluitt - backing vocals
Kiki Hawkins - backing vocals
2 Special Guests
PROGRAM:
Join us as Nona Hendryx, Reno and Nelson George examine the nature of identity pushed to the margins. They’ll question the world out loud with a profound sense of love and friendship, call for recognition, hold the world accountable for its actions, and celebrate the regenerative spirit of humanity.
In the spirit of two fisted singer songwriters such as Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Betty Davis, Odetta, Nikki Giovanni, and others, Carl Hancock Rux presents a rare performance by legendary singer/songwriter, Nona Hendryx. With a career spanning six decades of sound & style evolution paralleling the changing times, from bluebelle doo-wop to brill building revolutionary rock poetics to space age new wave goddess, Hendryx morphs into yet another incarnation.
Writer/filmmaker Nelson George pays tribute to poet Gil Scott-Heron and introduces a short film by Rux focusing on the impact of Scott-Heron's radical political vision and his transformative contribution to activism, connecting social movements rooted deeply in civil rights struggles from integration to the exploitation of mine workers, anti-nuclear war and apartheid protests as well as Scott-Heron's own political disillusionment and return to freedom struggles, all while impacting poets, musicians and the community at large, decrying a true America for real Americans.
Brutally honest comedian, political monologist Citizen Reno tackles America with an incendiary wit and a machine-gun delivery in a rant that expands from the neighborhood to the nation, reflecting on the ruins of 9/11, and the Ground-Zero guerrilla puzzle of voodoo patriotism, with scalding assessments of everyone from George W. Bush to Larry King to Donald Trump and the Obama/Osama drama.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS:
Carl Hancock Rux
Carl is a published poet, essayist, novelist, and playwright. His plays and performance works for theater have been produced and or commissioned throughout the United States and internationally at venues including The Joseph Papp Public Theater, the Robert E. Fischer Center for the Performing Arts, PS 122, the Kitchen, HERE Arts Center, New Victory Theater, Lincoln center (Serious Fun & Outdoors Festival), Aaron Davis Hall, the BAM Harvey Theater (Next Wave Festival), REDCAT (Los Angeles), Mass MOCA (Mass.), the Central District Forum for Arts and Ideas (Seattle, Washington), Theater X (Milwaulkee, Wisconsin), University of Ghana at Legon (West Africa), Ebenezor Experimental Theater Festival (Sweden) Maison des Arts (Creteil, France), and the Victoria Theater (Singapore) among others. Plays include Geneva Cottrell, Waiting for the Dog to Die, Mycenaean, Chapter & Verse, The No Black Male Show, Smoke, Lilies & Jade, Singing In the Womb of Angels, Yanga, Song of Sad Young Men and the libretto for two operas: The Blackamoor Angel and Makandal. As a radio journalist he has been a guest commentator on WNYC and for XM radio’s The Bob Edward’s Show as well as co-wrote and hosted National Public Radio’s Walt Whitman: Songs of Myself, winner of the New York Press Club Journalism Award for Entertainment News. As a recording artist he has released three cd’s: Rux Revue (Sony 550), Apothecary Rx (Giant Step) and Good Bread Alley (Thirsty Ear). Rux is the subject of Carl Hancock Rux, Coming of Age, (Larry Clamage/Richard Maniscalco for Voices of America) recipient of the CINE Golden Eagle award for television documentary. Carl Hancock Rux has written for (and performed with) several dance companies including the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Urban Bush Women, the Bill T. Jones/ Arnie Zane Dance Co., Jane Comfort & Co., and created the title role in the Robert Wilson/Bernice Johnson Reagon opera The Temptation of Saint Anthony which had its world premiere at the Paris Opera (Garnier). Rux is the former Head of the MFA Writing for Performance Program at Calarts and presently faculty lecturer at Brown University.
Nona Hendryx
From her beginnings with Patti LaBelle & The Bluebelles (the Sweethearts of The Apollo Theater); to Labelle (the 70s ground-breaking rock/funk trio with Patti LaBelle and Sarah Dash); followed by a stunning solo career; and induction into The Rhythm & Blues Foundations’ Hall of Fame in 1999, Nona Hendryx has always been on the cutting edge of music.
Her songs are edgy, provocative, political and full of double entendres and empowering messages that enabled LaBelle to break the traditional girl group mold. Labelle was the only contemporary black group to bring their show to New York’s prestigious Metropolitan Opera House. Labelle racked up three gold albums and a #1 worldwide hit with, Lady Marmalade (Voulez Vous Coucher Avec Moi Ce Soir?).
Nona’s solo efforts include from rock (Nona 1977) to funk (Female Trouble) to New Age (SkinDiver), with top ten hits including Bustin’ Out, Keep It Confidential, and Transformation. She has collaborated with such diverse artists as Material, Arthur Baker, Prince, and Talking Heads. Recently, Nona has worked with many young artists ranging from a cameo appearance in an India.Irie video, to producing and co-writing several films. Her work in various fields has even resulted in original songs featured in the 2010 Oscar-nominated film Precious and original songs for Charles R. Wright’s BLUE which appeared at The Roundabout Theater. The Randolph-Wright/Hendryx team are working on a multi-media cyber musical based on Hendryx' CD, SkinDiver, which starts performances at the end of May at Arena in Washington.
This year, Hendryx added to her long career an adjunct position teaching Stage Craft, a course she created for The Clive Davis Department at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. June 2011 Nona self released Mutatis Mutandis (meaning names and places have changed but things remain the same) with politically and socially relevant lyrics, wrapped in funky grooves, soulful vocals and driven by rock charged rhythms. Nona continues to rock gracefully!
Reno, “Comic Shaman”
Reno (Village Voice) is a stream-of-consciousness style solo comedic monologist/provocateur living where she was born, New York City. Her evening length shows have had several runs Off-Broadway, both commercially and at non-profit venues and tour regularly to the leading regional theaters, museums and performance spaces. She adapted her show Reno in Rage and Rehab into an ACE Award nominated (“Best Writing for an Entertainment Special”) HBO comedy hour. Her show, Reno Once Removed, was commissioned by Lincoln Center for their Serious Fun Festival and sold out with rave reviews. It subsequently moved to the Joseph Papp Public Theater and continued on around the country. She has made other, short-form tragi-comic essays for various outlets such as PBS, VH-1, Comedy Central and National Public Radio, and occasionally contributes written articles to magazines such as MS.
Reno’s show, Rebel Without a Pause: Unrestrained Reflections on September 11th, was extended several times due to critical acclaim and is her rapid-fire witness of the events of September 11th, how they affected her personally and in the context of the world at large.
In the show she is currently developing, Money Talks with Citizen Reno, she hilariously collides with Wall St./Capitalist orthodoxy, then chats with an expert. She has done the show a few times so far, with Economics Nobel Laureates Paul Krugman, Robert Solow, and Eric Maskin, as well as a former Chief Financial Officer of JP Morgan Chase, the exquisitely excellent Dina Dublon.
Originally, Reno traveled occassionally with Marga Gomez, and the Lilith Theatre Company out of San Francisco, then started performing solo every once in a blue moon in New York in 1983 at the WOW Cafe, Limbo Lounge, and various funky dives. A couple of years later, she accelerated her performance schedule and played maybe once or twice a month at such wonderful spaces as PS 122, Cafe Bustello, the Wah Wah Hut, St. Marks Poetry Project and of course, Ellie Covan's heroic gift to artist development, Dixon Place.
Nelson George
George is an author, filmmaker, television producer, and critic with a long career in analyzing and presenting the diverse elements of African-American culture.
Queen Latifah won the Golden Globe for playing the lead in his directorial debut, the HBO movie 'Life Support'. The critically acclaimed drama looked at the effects of HIV on a troubled black family in his native Brooklyn, New York. He recently co-edited The James Brown Reader (Plume), a collection of previously published articles about the Godfather of Soul that date as far back the late '50s.
George is the executive producer of the Chris Rock hosted feature documentary, Good Hair, a look at hair weaves, relaxers and the international black hair economy that premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. He has also served as host of Soul Cities, a travel show that debuted in November 2008 on VH1 Soul. Throughout the '80s and '90s George was a columnist for Billboard magazine and the Village Voice newspaper, work that led him to write a series of award winning black music histories.
He won a Grammy for his contribution to the linear notes package on the James Brown Star Time boxed set. As a screenwriter George co-wrote Strictly Business, which starred Halle Berry, and CB4, a vehicle for Chris Rock. He was an executive producer of Jim McKay's film, Everyday People, which premiered at the Sundance festival, and Todd Williams' Peabody award winning documentary The N Word. In 2009 Viking published his memoir, City Kid, a look at the connections between childhood in Brooklyn and his adult career in Manhattan, Los Angeles and Detroit. It is now available in paperback.
His web series, Left Unsaid, debuted at ABFF in Miami in July 2009. It can be viewed at www.leftunsaidseries.com or at Nelson George YouTube channel.
His next novel, a noir tale set in the world of hip-hop, will be published in fall 2011.
BEHIND THE SCENES:
This is Reno’s and Nelson’s first performance at Harlem Stage. However, Carl Hancock Rux has been associated with Harlem Stage since the early 90s and is currently very much in the mix with us as the conceiver/writer of a new opera, Makandal, which we are producing. He recently directed Cabaret Chocolat and performed as James Baldwin during the Harlem Jazz Shrines Festival this last spring at Harlem Stage. Nona has worked here on a few occasions with Carl and Sekou Sundiata. Both Nona and Carl have had long associations with Sekou, who created WeDaPeoples Cabaret as part of his America Project initiative, a response to 9/11. Rux picked up the torch last year with a successful evening of song and dance.
As the 10th anniversary will have been that week, we are doing this and a number of other programs in response to and as a look beyond. Harlem Stage is determined to keep WeDaPeoples Cabaret alive because of its ability to marshal the forces of some extraordinary artists and activists. It is a legacy of one artist who created an ongoing dialogue through the arts that addressed complex issues of citizenship, activism, local, and global issues.
TICKETS: $45
RIGHT NOW! (A WeDaPeoples Cabaret)
