Issuu

, Apr 23 – 27, 2014

Photo: Bill T. Jones and Lawrence Weschler by Ian Douglas

Live Ideas is made possible by The Ford Foundation. Additional support is provided by New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, The Samuel M. Levy Family Foundation, Theatre Development Fund and other generous donors.

Cover Photo: Dmitri Kasterine, Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France, 1976

introducing live ideas... A few years back when Bill T. Jones and I were discussing launching an annual ideas festival in a dance space, we agreed that we should think in terms of embodied ideas, the full range of thinking that blossoms forth from the body itself: mind-body, body-soul, bodypolitic, and so forth. Last year’s inaugural The Worlds of Oliver Sacks was emblematic in the way it plumbed the first of those. This year, with James Baldwin, This Time, we are planting our flag at the intersection of the next two, for there were few political figures as deeply engaged and as capaciously soulful as James Baldwin, nor we’d like to insist, any as urgently pertinent to our own times. We are especially proud that this April’s New York Live Arts’ Live Ideas festival will be kicking off The Year of James Baldwin, a concept of Harlem Stage, whom we are thrilled to be working with again, along with Columbia University School of the Arts and collaborators spread throughout the city. We agree with one of our Festival’s premier participants, the poet Nikky Finney, that James Baldwin may well have been one of “the most salient, sublime and consequential American writers of the twentieth century.” And this is not just because he confronted truths about race and gender with a vividness and lucidity few before him had done, but because he always did so from the vantage of an American—not just a black man, not just a gay man, but an heir to the whole harrowing, horrible, magnificent American project, and a prophet as to what that project yet could become, and indeed has to become. So please join us this year in celebrating a great man’s bracing vision. – Lawrence Weschler, Curator Live Ideas: James Baldwin, This Time!

The Year of James Baldwin A consortium of cultural organizations from throughout New York City are uniting to declare 2014-15 The Year of James Baldwin on what would have been the great American essayist, novelist, playwright, poet, and activist James Baldwin’s 90th year (he was born in Harlem on August 2, 1924). The principal conveners of this multidisciplinary festival will consist of copartners Harlem Stage; New York Live Arts; and Columbia University School of the Arts. Other collaborators include The New School’s Vera List Center for Art and Politics and the School of Writing, New York University, The Poetry Society of America, The James Baldwin School and others to be announced as the year progresses. The Year will launch April 23 with the second annual installment of New York Live Arts’ Live Ideas festival, this year entitled James Baldwin, This Time! with twenty events spread over five days. It will culminate in the spring of 2015 with major programming at the Harlem Stage Gatehouse. Events throughout the city will celebrate this too often overlooked American writer whose voice was arguably one of the most profound and imperative of the twentieth century.

live Ideas at-a-glance To purchase tickets, a festival pass or make a reservation for free events, visit newyorklivearts.org/liveideas or call the box office at 212.924.0077.

Wednesday, April 23 Jimmy at High Noon 12pm, Studio, FREE

Baldwinâ€™s Capacious Imagination & Influence 2:30pm, Studios, $15

Nothing Personal (World Premiere) 5pm, Theater, $40/$15

Opening Keynote Conversation 8pm, Theater, $60 OC

Thursday, April 24 Jimmy at High Noon 12pm, Studio, FREE

Baldwin & Delaney 2pm, Theater, $10

James Baldwin This Time 5:30pm, Studio, $15

Nothing Personal 8pm, Theater, $40/$15

Event is open-captioned. Event is interpreted in American Sign Language.

Friday, April 25 Jimmy at High Noon 12pm, Studio, FREE

After Giovanni’s Room: Baldwin and Queer Futurity 2pm Theater, $10

Baldwin’s New York 5:30pm, Studios, $15

Stew on ‘Native Song’

8pm, Theater, $35/$15 OC

Saturday, April 26 Jimmy at High Noon 12pm, Studio, FREE

Carl Hancock Rux: Stranger on Earth 2pm, Theater, $35/$15 OC Jimmy’s Blues: Discussing the Poetry of James Baldwin 5:30pm, Studio, $15

Baldwin Through Dance: Charles O. Anderson and Dianne McIntyre 8pm, Theater, $40/$15

Sunday, April 27 Jimmy at High Noon 12pm, Studio, FREE

Baldwin Through Dance: Charles O. Anderson and Dianne McIntyre 2pm, Theater, $40/$15

A Concluding Conversation: Lebowitz & Tóibín 6pm, Theater, $40/$15 OC

Throughout the Festival Hank Willis Thomas (Video installation)

Ongoing throughout the festival FREE This innovative video installation, A person is more important than anything else…, will be driven by the cadence and intonation of James Baldwin’s voice, for Baldwin was also an orator whose delivery was almost as forceful as his ideas. Artist Hank Willis Thomas will weave audio, images, and video together in a fluid-moving, digital stream of consciousness that connects Baldwin’s 20th century discourse with the concerns and urgencies of the 21st. In recent years Thomas’s career has been surging throughout the world; in New York City he is represented by Jack Shainman Gallery.

Wall Mural of The New Yorker “Letter From a Region of My Mind” Ongoing throughout the festival FREE

The November 1962 issue of The New Yorker magazine (in which the piece Letter From a Region of My Mind first appeared later to become the basis for Baldwin’s great book The Fire Next Time) will be reproduced as a mural: the text, often a single streaming column, is flanked on all sides by advertisements incongruously hawking all manner of luxury goods.

Wednesday, April 23 Jimmy at High Noon A Series of Five Daily Readings

12pm, Studio, FREE Presented in partnership with Columbia University School of the Arts, this noon-time series features poets, actors, musicians, essayists and scholars reading from a range of James Baldwin’s classics, as well as discussing his impact on their lives and thinking. Speakers include poet Nikky Finney; writers Hilton Als and Darryl Pinckney; actors Jesse L. Martin and André De Shields; musicians Vijay Iyer and Jason Moran; and playwrights Suzan-Lori Parks and Marcus Gardley, among others to be announced at a later date. “Jimmy at High Noon” will be overseen by director Patricia McGregor, with dramaturgy by Columbia faculty member and Baldwin scholar Rich Blint. For the full schedule of daily readings and participants visit newyorklivearts.org/liveideas.

Baldwin’s Capacious Imagination & Influence 2:30pm, Studios, $15 MacArthur Award winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks (Topdog/ Underdog and The Death of the Last Black Man in the Entire World) discusses her years as Baldwin’s student with Roberta Uno, former artistic director of New WORLD Theater which staged a ground-breaking Baldwin production. This conversation, moderated by Live Ideas curator Lawrence Weschler, will also feature playwright John Guare (Six Degrees of Separation and A Free Man of Color).

Wednesday, April 23 Nothing Personal (World Premiere) 5pm, Theater, $40/$15 Not the least improbable aspect of Baldwin’s life was the fact that he and the photographer Richard Avedon attended high school together at Dewitt Clinton, in the Bronx (class of 1942), and co-edited the school’s literary magazine. A bit over twenty years later, the two joined forces once again in an exceptionally powerful melding of images and text, the 1964 volume Nothing Personal. Now, in a world premiere production, director Patricia McGregor, working with actor Colman Domingo (Passing Strange and Lee Daniel’s The Butler), brings the Baldwin/Avedon collaboration to life in a wrenchingly original stage adaptation.

Opening Keynote Conversation 8pm, Theater, $60 OC Featuring Bill T. Jones, renowned choreographer and Executive Artistic Director of New York Live Arts in conversation with visual artist and MacArthur Fellow, Carrie Mae Weems and celebrated novelist and essayist, Jamaica Kincaid (Autobiography of My Mother, Lucy, A Small Place). Approaching Baldwin from a range of disciplines, these highly accomplished cultural figures share Baldwin’s commitment to the necessary excavation of the dense, complex and contradictory history of the nation. From the stunning visual imagery of Weems, to the startlingly honest and demanding prose of Kincaid, this conversation reaches across genres to address issues of importance to Baldwin, but crucial for our own transformation--this time! Self-portrait with James Baldwin, New York, September 17, 1964 Photograph by Richard Avedon © The Richard Avedon Foundation

Thursday, April 24 Jimmy at High Noon 12pm, Studio, FREE (See Wednesday listing)

Baldwin & Delaney 2pm, Theater, $10 Rachel Cohen, whose critically acclaimed A Chance Meeting braids a sequence of seminal encounters across American cultural history, including Baldwin’s with both Richard Avedon and Norman Mailer, will read from a third chapter, focusing on the young writer’s lifetransforming encounter with the sublime painter Beauford Delaney, at the latter’s Greenwich Village apartment. Following her reading, Cohen will engage Diedra Harris-Kelley, Co-Director of the Romare Bearden Foundation and Baldwin and Delaney biographer David Leeming, in a conversation about Delaney’s enduring importance in Baldwin’s life.

James Baldwin This Time 5:30pm, Studio, $15 Newly appointed Counsel to Mayor DeBlasio, Maya Wiley moderates a conversation on what Baldwin might have made of everything from the burgeoning prison-industrial complex and the recent gutting of the Voter Rights Bill through the Barack Obama presidency. Distinguished panelists include Lawrence Weschler, The Grio’s Managing Editor Joy-Ann Reid, Civil Rights Activist Five Mualimmak, and Brooklyn City Councilman Jumaane Williams.

Thursday, April 24 Nothing Personal 8pm, Theater, $40/$15 (See Wednesday listing)

Friday, April 25 Jimmy at High Noon 12pm, Studio, FREE (See Wednesday listing)

After Giovanni’s Room: Baldwin and Queer Futurity 2pm Theater, $10 This multi-disciplinary conversation examines James Baldwin’s mid-twentieth century novel as an opportunity to consider the possibilities for a liberating “queer” future on the horizon, but not yet in sight. The importance of Giovanni’s Room does not simply stem from its status as Baldwin’s sole novel on homosexuality but, also its subterranean yet searing indictment of the dangers of an enduring American innocence. Taking its cue from the late thinker and theorist José Esteban Muñoz, this panel seeks to envision “the then and there” of a not-yet-realized progressive future as one way to negotiate the often devastating realities of the “here and now.” Panelists include Kyle Abraham, Rich Blint, Matthew Brim, Laura Flanders and Bill T. Jones.

Friday, April 25 Baldwin’s New York 5:30pm, Studios, $15 Author, educator and niece of James Baldwin, Aisha Karefa-Smart discusses her Uncle Jimmy’s New York roots in conversation with Thelma Golden, Director and Chief Curator of The Studio Museum in Harlem; Patricia Cruz Executive Director of Harlem Stage; author, editor and curator Steven G. Fullwood; and authors Michele Wallace (Black Macho and The Myth of The Superwoman) and Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts (Harlem is Nowhere).

Stew on ‘Native Song’ Commissioned and produced by Harlem Stage 8pm, Theater, $35/$15 OC In a dynamic and intimate evening, Tony Award (Passing Strange) and Obie Award winning artist, Stew, will share his creative process and his lifelong journey into the world of Baldwin for his new work Notes of a Native Song. This insightful evening will engage audiences through fragments of work in progress: songs, poems, sermons and projections, using the work of James Baldwin and the locale of Harlem as filters through which to view the role of black artists in America, as well as springboards from which to leap into future questions of black art. Notes of a Native Song investigates, at times interrogates, the relationship between art and the black community, and asks what exactly a black American artist owes to this notion of community. Notes of a Native Song will premiere in June 2015 at the Harlem Stage Gatehouse. Photo: Stew by Jeff Fasano

Saturday, April 26 Jimmy at High Noon 12pm, Studio, FREE (See Wednesday listing)

Carl Hancock Rux Stranger on Earth

Commissioned and produced by Harlem Stage 2pm, Theater, $35/$15 OC A preview of a new work, Stranger on Earth imagines a chance meeting between writer James Baldwin and singer Dinah Washington at a Harlem jazz club in 1963. Drawing from Baldwin’s essays including Notes of a Native Son, Nobody Knows My Name and The Fire Next Time -- combined with Rux’s original dialogue and performed by Rux and Marcelle Davies-Lashley -- the work addresses issues regarding race, identity, music and the future of a world both artists are struggling to understand. This showing will include a talk back with the artists. Stranger on Earth will premiere in February 2015 at the Harlem Stage Gatehouse.

Jimmy’s Blues: Discussing the Poetry of James Baldwin 5:30pm, Studio, $15 Co-presented with The Poetry Society of America, this poetry event will feature conversations about and readings from Jimmy’s Blues by renowned American poets Nikky Finney, Edward Hirsch, Yusef Komunyakaa, Ed Pavlić, Meghan O’Rourke and Nathalie Handal. Photo: Carl Hancock Rux by Susab Johann

Saturday, April 26 Baldwin Through Dance Charles O. Anderson & Dianne McIntyre 8pm, Theater, $40/$15 New York Live Arts presents the New York City Premiere of Charles O. Andersonâ€™s Restless Natives. Infused with a stunning sound score and original texts by poet Ursula Rucker, this work has been inspired by James Baldwinâ€™s seminal work Another Country. One of the First Ladies of Dance, Dianne McIntyre brings her soulfully embodied presence alongside a live musical score to the stage in the world premiere of Time is Time.

Photo: Charles O. Anderson by Sandy Carson

Sunday, April 27 Jimmy at High Noon 12pm, Studio, FREE (See Wednesday listing)

Baldwin Through Dance Charles O. Anderson & Dianne McIntyre 2pm, Theater, $40/$15 (See Friday listing)

A Concluding Conversation Fran Lebowitz & Colm Tóibín 6pm, Theater, $40/$15 OC Writer, sardonic provocateur and New Jersey émigré Fran Lebowitz (Metropolitan Life, Social Studies, etc.) and award-winning Irish novelist and essayist, Columbia Professor Colm Tóibín (The Master; The Testament of Mary; New Ways to Kill Your Mother, among many others) discuss Baldwin’s legacy and his remarkable and enduring impact on their own lives and vantages. Bill T. Jones joins the conversation as moderator.

Photos: (left) Fran Lebowitz, courtesy of the artist (right) Colm Tóibín by Phoebe Ling

tickets

t: 212. 924. 0077 Mon – Fri 1 – 9pm Sat – Sun 10 – 9pm newyorklivearts.org/liveideas The Live Ideas All-Festival Pass is available for $175 and provides access to all events including the opening and concluding conversations.

are you a member?

New York Live Arts Members enjoy early access to tickets for our annual seasons, including Live Ideas, as well as ticket discounts, special programs and other activities. Higher membership levels include access to special performances of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and other benefits. Your generosity supports the full range of our programs. Become a Member at newyorklivearts.org/join

McNally Jackson is the official book seller of the Live Ideas festival.

visit Directions 219 W 19th Street, New York, NY 10011 (between 7th and 8th Avenues) 1 Train to 18th Street 2, 3, F, L, A, C, E Trains to 14th Street

Contact t: 212. 691. 6500 info@newyorklivearts.org

newyorklivearts.org/liveideas

219 W 19th Street, New York, NY 10011