A COMPULSION FOR BREATHING is an interactive and immersive multi-media performance ritual happening inside the lives of AyEmma (pronounced I-EMMA) and Sahmbadi (pronounced SOMEBODY), two black femmes who stay getting caught up between then, there, now, here, and how long in their spectacularly 'mundane' lives. They are holding on for what may be their last breaths.
A COMPULSION FOR BREATHING was first commissioned by Changing Perceptions Theater Company to commemorate the birthdays of Lorraine Hansberry and Malcolm X at The Schomburg Center for Black Culture in Harlem in 2018, featuring Audrey Hailes and Jaime’ Dzandu, directed by Tanisha Sabine. The play was awarded development funds from the Women in Theatre Journal to support a 5 day intensive lab at Target Margin Theater in Sunset Park, Brooklyn directed by Tanisha Sabine in 2019.
In the photo: Jaime Dzandu as Sahmbadi and Audrey Hailes as AyEmma
CHARISMA AT THE CROSSROADS:
Charisma’s dreams of becoming a fashion designer are put on trial before a nightmarish adult kangaroo court that only wants to consume the hopes and aspirations of youth. An interactive play with music and dance.
CHARISMA AT THE CROSSROADS was commissioned by Advantage Arts. The play was inspired by conversations with Newark youth during workshops. The youth performed the play at the Alice Young Arts Center at Drew University in Madison, NJ in 2018. The play was co-directed by Lisa Brenner and Kimani Fowlin. The play is published in REPRESENT! PLAYS FOR MULTICULTURAL YOUTH on Bloomsbury Press.
In the photo: Cast of students from Advantage Arts and Drew University
GUTTA BEAUTIFUL
This is a love story set inside the bitter-sweet landscape of GUTTA BEAUTIFUL, where choices often find us confronting illusions and a troubling history that echoes in every blue note, belly laughter, and communion, whether in the kitchen or at the corner.
GUTTA BEAUTIFUL was first produced by Ocean Ana Rising, Inc. (OAR) at the former Warehouse Theatre in Washington, DC in 2005, directed by Eric Ruffin. OAR produced the play again for DC’s first Fringe Festival at The Woolly Mammoth Theatre for sold-out and standing-room-only crowds in 2006. Sybil Roberts Williams was our dramaturg for those early years. The play went on to NYC where it was produced by New Federal Theatre at Henry Street Settlement, directed by Eric Ruffin in 2007. In 2011, it was directed by Elisha Efua Bartels and produced by Isoke Edwards for Griot Productions at the Little Carib Theatre in Woodbrook, Trinidad.
GUTTA BEAUTIFUL is included in Steppenwolf Theatre’s “The Mix: A New Play Resource.”
ITAGUA MEJI: A ROAD AND A PRAYER tells a story in poetry, dance, and sacred ritual as Aisha conspires for survival by the wits of her own sacred divinity - her mind. ITAGUA MEJI travels a road of ancestral memory. It is also a shared prayer, an inside secret, a choreopoem.
ITAGUA MEJI: A ROAD AND A PRAYER has been presented at The Brecht Forum-NYC (2010), Rutgers University-New Brunswick (2013), the Nuyorican Poets Cafe (2015 and 2016). The choreopoem has been directed by Kimani Fowlin, Maya James, and Nina Angela Mercer with choreography and performances by Audrey Hailes and Kimani Fowlin.
In the photo: Audrey Hailes as Aisha
Araba Nazaire as Sara Josephine James/Destiny Rose in the first workshop of GYPSY AND THE BULLY DOOR at The Warehouse Theater, 7th Street, Washington, D.C. Capital Fringe Festival 2011.
GYPSY & THE BULLY DOOR:
Sara has a dream, but life just keeps happening in ways that seem to pull that dream further and further away at every turn, especially when she keeps losing the people she loves. Though she fights to hold on, determined to shake loose the haunting of many past lives, there’s a cost. There’s also a way to heal. But the choice to be well is often more difficult than it seems.
This story is a multi-media, immersive, and interactive ritual experience set to the undeniable call of DC’s Gogo music, led by The Mayor, our funk conductor and “lead talker,” while the full cast of vibrant characters becomes The Pocket Roll Call, a percussive band of characters who fuel and foil Sara’s movements, no matter where she goes to escape.
In 2023, GYPSY & THE BULLY DOOR returned to DC for the Lorraine Hansberry Experimental Theater Laboratory co produced by Ocean Ana Rising, Inc. and The Woodshed at the Racial Justice Institute at Georgetown University. Eric Ruffin returned as director with Matt “Swamp Guinee” Miller as music director, and Mercer as producer, playwright, and dramaturg for the work.
GYPSY & THE BULLY DOOR was first presented as a stage reading for the Classical Theatre of Harlem’s New Classics Reading Series in 2011, directed by Eric Ruffin, who continued onward with the play at the former Warehouse Theater in Washington, DC in 2012 for DC’s Fringe Festival, where we began developing a Gogo Theatre aesthetic produced by OAR. Otis Cortez Ramsey-Zoe was our dramaturg. In 2012, the play went into an intense developmental process of the script through the Norman Mailer Center’s August Wilson Blues Poetics Workshop. In 2013, the play was selected to have a stage reading at Brooklyn Public Library-Grand Army Plaza, co produced by Center for Black Literature and the Norman Mailer Center. In 2014, Ebony Noelle Golden directed an elevated, staged reading for the American Theater of Harlem at the former Dumbo Sky in Dumbo-Brooklyn, NY.
In the photo: Araba Brown as Sara Josephine James
MOTHER WIT AND WATER-BORN:
A girl-child is born on the ship, Mary Mother of God, as it sails across the Atlantic Ocean from the coast of West of Africa. The baby girl’s cries are fierce as machetes raining from the darkest night sky. Many believe she is more aberration than human, more problem that precious cargo. She certainly isn’t meant to survive. But she does. MOTHER WIT AND WATER-BORN is a choreo-drama telling the story of 7 generations of mothers and daughters emerging from that girl-child’s lineage into futurity.
In 2013, MOTHERWIT AND WATER-BORN was directed by Maya James with choroegraphy by Kimani Fowlin at National Black Theatre for the I Am Soul reading series in Harlem-NYC.
In the photo: Kimani Fowlin as Ori and Maya Luisa as The Ocean.