Artists & Projects Directory

• Africa Consortium
• David Zambrano
• Dean Moss
• Faustin Linyekula
• Gregory Maqoma
• Lars Jan
• Leila Buck
• Marc Bamuthi Joseph
• Nora Chipaumire
• Ralph Lemon
• The America Project
• Voices of Strength

Marc Bamuthi Joseph/The Living Word Project

red, black & GREEN: a blues (rbGb) is a full-length, multimedia performance work designed to jumpstart a conversation about environmental justice, social ecology and collective responsibility in the climate change era. Combining dance, text and visuals in a new mode of kinetic performance, rbGb reunites seven artists from the acclaimed work, the break/s: a mixtape for stage - writer/performer Marc Bamuthi Joseph; director Michael John Garcés; choreographer Stacey Printz; drummer/beatboxer Tommy Shepherd; documentary filmmaker Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi; lighting designer James Clotfelter; and media designer David Szlasa. Joseph is joined onstage in the performance by Shepherd, dancer/actor Traci Tolmaire, and vocalist/visual artist Theaster Gates, who is also designing the set. Also returning to the team of collaborators is costume designer, Mai-Lei Pecorari, who previously worked with Joseph on Scourge.

The creation of rbGb utilizes a dynamic research-to-performance methodology that yields community input as artistic resource material; specifically, the voices of people often left out of discussions about "living green." This research has taken place through Life is Living--a series of community eco-festivals in urban parks nationwide featuring art, activism and education. Interviews, poems, films and murals from Life is Living are being translated into text, choreography and imagery that express the challenge of living green where violent crime and poor education pose a more imminent danger than ecological crisis, and that reveal emerging definitions of environmentalism in these communities.

Set into Gates' malleable stage installation of repurposed building materials and clay objects, and heightened by Jacobs-Fantauzzi's vivid films and vibrant graffiti murals from Life is Living, the poetry and performance in rbGb puts forward the idea that valuing your own life, and the life of your community, is the first step to valuing planet Earth.