Learn More About This Event Below

Touchscape, An Emotional Striptease is a raw, sensual, sexual collection of first person monologues exploring men, their relationship with touch, and the dark world of sexual outsiders; it is a window into an ever-present parallel universe rarely inhabiting theatrical stages yet almost all of us harbor at least passing thoughts about the taboos being explore here. The men of Touchscape share their very specific version of everyday everyman's existence inviting the viewer inside to experience the work without judgment, and in the process identifying with the men onstage.  The finished work will incorporate movement.

A presentation of the Harlem Stage Inside/Out program

Leadership support from the Ford Foundation.

James Scruggs

James Scruggs was awarded a Performance Art Grant from Franklin Furnace in August of 2002. In March 2003 he became a resident artist at HERE Arts Center. Disposable Men, his solo performance piece with 8 channels of video, was included in the regular season produced by HERE. In February 2005 he received a fellowship from The New Jersey State Council on the Arts for artistic excellence. He was awarded the first ever NY Innovative Theater Award for Outstanding Solo Performance, in September of 2005, for his performance in Disposable Men. In February 2006 he was a resident artist with Mabou Mines. In December 2006, Scruggs was featured in Interrogating America Through Theater And Performance (a textbook).  He was included in the “American Playwright” chapter in which his work was  contrasted with Suzan-Lori Parks’.

In January of 2007 he performed as the lead actor in Thomas Bradshaw’s Purity at PS 122. Disposable Men completed a three city tour, to Seven Stages in Atlanta, Perishable in Providence and New World Theater in Amherst in March 2007. He performed Disposable Men in October of 2007at The Painted Bride in Philadelphia. In July 2007, Scruggs returned to the HERE Arts Center to perform a leading role in Pete McCabe’s In The Company of Trees.  He premiered (RUS)H, another collaboration with Kristin Marting and HERE Arts Center, in February 2008 at 3LD. In March 2008 he performed the role of Old Man River in Lear Debessonets and On The Levee at Epic Theater in NYC. In June 2009 he performed Sancho in Lear DeBessonets’ site specific Quixote in Philadelphia, PA. He took Disposable Men back to Perishable Theater and 7Stages in November of 2009. He will have a staged reading of his new work, Touchscape, An Emotional Striptease, at Harlem Stage this spring. He has a BFA in Film from School of Visual Arts.