Fela!

His Passion Ignited a Generation.
His Music Fueled a Revolution.
His Legacy Inspires the World. 

 

This Wednesday we're in for a treat!  Immediately after class we'll be heading to the Eugene O'Neill Theatre for the brand new Broadway Musical FELA!


To prepare you for the experience of the show, a little bit about the show, the man, and more, all from the show's website.....


What is Fela! about, you ask?  

FELA! is a new musical directed and choreographed by Tony Award winner Bill T. Jones, with a book by Jim Lewis and Bill T. Jones, in which audiences are welcomed into the extravagant, decadent and rebellious world of Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti. Using his pioneering music (a blend of jazz, funk and African rhythm and harmonies), FELA! explores Kuti's controversial life as artist, political activist and revolutionary musician. Featuring many of Fela Kuti's most captivating songs and Bill T. Jones's imaginative staging, this new show is a provocative hybrid of concert, dance and musical theater.

Who is Fela?

Fela Anikulapo-Kuti was a Nigerian multi-instrumentalist musician and composer, a pioneer of Afrobeat music, a human rights activist and a political maverick. He is ranked among the world’s most influential musicians.   Read a full bio of the man here.

Where is the theater and how long's the show?

The Eugene O'Neill Theatre
230 West 49th Street (between 7th and 8th Ave)
New York, New York
8pm - 10:45pm

Learn more about the show on the website:  www.felaonbroadway.com

Here's some real footage of Fela playing, his dancers dancing....

Article about Tarell

 

From the New York Times:
Writer Digs Up Gods From the Bayou
by PATRICK HEALY

(To the right:  the playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney at the Public Theater.  Photo by Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times.) 


The article begins:

TARELL ALVIN McCRANEY enters. Miami, 1980s. He is a boy growing up in the Liberty City housing projects, among the nation’s worst. He stays with his father and grandparents on some nights. They feed him peanut butter and jelly, and he is content. They are devout Baptists and fill up the boy with God’s stories, and he is content.

On other nights the boy stays with his mother. She is a crack addict with an abusive lover, with unpaid bills. Now and then the electricity is cut off. Now and then the boy is picked on by other boys for being gentle, shy, quiet. Still the boy is content; he loves his mother. She moves them to another project to give the boy a fresh start. Three years later a hurricane named Andrew hits their home, destroys everything. They return to Liberty City. The mother checks herself into rehab. Some years later, when the boy is a man of 23 and his mother is 40, she dies of an AIDS-related illness.

This is Mr. McCraney’s own story, and this is the kind of language — terse and unsentimental — that has helped make him a playwright of uncommon acclaim. His prose is as raw as his subject matter: children growing up without parents, teenagers searching for their identities, adults holding on to hope. Most of his characters are poor and jobless, and some die suddenly. And their dialogue takes a distinct form: The actors often drop out of character to describe their stage directions aloud — “Ogun Size enters” — to make the theatergoers feel they are not so much watching a play as they are sharing in every banal and beautiful line of a story that the cast and the author are unfurling.

 Continue reading  the article at the New Times website....here.

In The Red & Brown Water

Wednesday, November 4th - our 3rd show......

In the red & Brown Water

 

Meet at the Public Theater @ 7:40 pm

425 Lafayette Street

Playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney will speak with us!

Meet Tarell Tomorrow

I have heard back from Tarell, the author of IN THE RED AND BROWN WATER, that he would love to meet you people. He doesn't know yet if it will be before or after the show. Mostly likely AFTER - so please get permission from your folks! We do not want to miss this! Show will come down around 10pm, talk should be over AROUND 10:30 pm.

Tarell is the most celebrated twenty-something playwright in America at this time, and an inspired, inspiring person. For one of MANY articles on the guy:

http://www.whatsonstage.com/index.php?pg=207&story=E8821194805596

Over and out,

Karen