Tree City Legends: Theatre
For Immediate Release
PRESS CONTACT:
Anthem Salgado, Director of Communications & Special Events
anthem@theintersection.org | (415) 626-2787x.103
-or-
Sean San Jose, Program Director, Theatre & Hybrid Project
sean@theintersection.org | (415)626-2787x.107
* PLEASE NOTE: UPDATED PRESS RELEASE, JANUARY 18, 2012
TREE CITY LEGENDS
The world premiere of a new performance by emerging playwright/musician Dennis Kim, directed by Marc Bamuthi Joseph, and the third installment of Intersection for the Arts’ and Resident Theatre Company Campo Santo’s Next series
February 16 through March 04, 2012
PRESS OPENING: February 20
8pm, Intersection for the Arts
925 Mission Street, Suite 109, San Francisco, CA 94103
Tickets: $20-$25 | www.brownpapertickets.com/event/221342
Information: www.theintersection.org | 415-626-2787 x 109
Creative Collaborative Team: Alejandro Acosta, Melvign Badiola, Christina Dinkel, Noelle Durant, Ben Fisher, Pak Han, Tanya Orellana, Joan Osato, Darl Andrew Packard
San Francisco, CA – January 18, 2012 – Intersection for the Arts and resident theatre companies: Campo Santo, the Living Word Project, and Ictus, present the World Premiere of Tree City Legends, a new performance piece with live music, by emerging playwright and musician Dennis Kim. The story takes place in mythological Tree City and focuses on the Korean-American Kane family consisting of four young men who are attending a funeral. The scenes that follow hinge upon the goodbye letter of their late brother, Junie. The characters’ eulogies ring like psalms, portraying a world that is both fractured by torment and loss, and united by faith and legend-making.
Tree City Legends is a multidisciplinary theater work that melds post-hip hop aesthetics, urban folklore, Korean traditional tales, live music, legend, and parable. It is all together, part bildungsroman, part blues song, and part Book of Jonah remix. Biblical imagery, multi-perspective narrative, and a sense of longing underpin the main character, Junie’s story. These elements haunt Junie’s rise and demise as a folk-singing sensation and eventual escapist. The bitter realities of the neighborhood block and a ghostly past loom in the background as the brothers struggle to make sense of a world that was not made with them in mind. Their connection to each other is expressed through an invented language, their way of surviving the margins of the cultural page.
PLAY BACKGROUND AND DEVELOPMENT
Tree City Legends is the latest installment in a dedicated series of new plays by first-time playwrights, which Intersection for the Arts and Campo Santo have been focusing on and developing for the past several years. This series began with the 2010 World Premiere of Chinaka Hodge’s critically acclaimed play Mirrors In Every Corner directed by Marc Bamuthi Joseph and was followed by Sharif Abu-Hamdeh’s equally acclaimed premiere of his play Habibi directed by Campo Santo stage and screen star Omar Metwally in the Fall of 2010. This new play Tree City Legends by musician, poet and emerging playwright Dennis Kim (aka Denizen Kane) is the next plateau in this series. All three writers share immigrant and minority status living in America and all three of their plays involve themes of cultural conflict and identity – complex and contemporary themes for writers to undertake in their first plays, but are showing to be quite compelling and moving on the stage. These three plays form the core of Campo Santo’s The Next – New Play Lab, a home and development facility for taking writers through the process of development, outreach, and premiere of their first productions, and beyond. Each writer came to theatre as a newcomer, infusing Campo Santo with new perspectives, while having their voices supported and nurtured in the development process. Chinaka Hodge was a young poet of 16 the first time she came to Intersection through Youth Speaks; Sharif Abu-Hamdeh was in the Visual Arts program at UCSB when he met Campo Santo; and Dennis Kim was a musician evolving his stories of his cities, families and legends into a new kind of theatre with the Living Word Project and Campo Santo with Intersection.
First developed for Intersection’s Hybrid Project and New Works Festival in 2008, Tree City Legends was developed and performed as a solo piece written and performed by Dennis Kim and later at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, this process completes a more than four year journey to bring these songs and stories to full life. The piece expands beyond any specific Korean American experience and explores the profound feelings of rootlessness and abandonment of urban people of color, specifically Asian Pacific Islander American immigrants in tracing the lives of the Kane brothers.
The visual design of Tree City Legends, created by Joan Osato, the Collaborative Design Team, and Marc Bamuthi Joseph, functions as a cinematic and visual storytelling device. It uses found footage, portraiture and panoramic landscape images to serve as scenic design and transitional spaces. With spoken word, music, and dance against this cinematic backdrop, Tree City Legends continues to create new theatre as Marc Bamuthi Joseph has done in seminal works, such as Word Becomes Flesh, Scourge and the break/s, and as Campo Santo and Intersection have done with more than 75 groundbreaking premiere performances since 1996.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES
Dennis Kim: Writer, Composer, Performer, aka Denizen Kane, is a young Korean-American leader and a core member of the nationally acclaimed The Living Word Project. He co-founded I Was Born with Two Tongues (1998 – 2003), a pan-Asian spoken word quartet that helped foster the current APIA spoken word renaissance. The group helped establish a collegiate touring circuit for APIA spoken word artists, and created the APIA Spoken Word Summit. He also co-founded the seminal Chicago hip-hop crew Typical Cats, flagship of revered indie imprint Galapagos4. They released two LPs, and helped produce a new generation of Chicago MCs. Denizen made his mark as a solo artist with a pair of CD’s entitled Tree City Legends Vols. I & II. Volume II was selected by Greg Kot as one of the Chicago Tribune’s Chicago 10: Top local indie releases of 2005. His newest LP, Brother Min’s Journey to the West, is a Tree City Legend told entirely in the voice of Min, the youngest of the Kane brothers. Tree City Legends Vols. I & II and Brother Min form a triptych examining suicide from the perspectives of the grieving and the departed. His poetry has been published in numerous periodicals and anthologies, including the Asian Pacific American Journal, the Columbia Review (Columbia College Chicago), Echoes Upon Echoes: New Korean American Writings, and Screaming Monkeys (Coffee House Press). He has also performed on three seasons of the HBO series Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry Jam and has shared the stage with such luminaries as Saul Williams, Danny Hoch, Marc Bamuthi Joseph and Suheir Hammad. Kim also collaborated with San Jose and Erika Chong Shuch on The Future Project: Sunday Will Come, which enjoyed a four week run at Intersection for the Arts in Fall 2009. He also presented a duet excerpt ofTree City Legends, as a work-in-progress at the 2008 Hybrid Festival of New Works. A second version of the excerpt was created and shown at the inaugural Left Coast Leaning Festival at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in 2009.
Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Director and Artistic Director of the Living Word Project, is one of America’s leading voices in performance, arts education, and artistic curation. In the Fall of 2007, Bamuthi graced the cover of Smithsonian Magazine after being named one of America’s Top Young Innovators in the Arts and Sciences. He is the artistic director of the 7-part HBO documentary Russell Simmons presents Brave New Voices and an inaugural recipient of the United States Artists Rockefeller Fellowship, which annually recognizes 50 of the country’s “greatest living artists”. He has entered the world of literary performance after crossing the sands of “traditional” theater, most notably on Broadway in the Tony Award winning The Tap Dance Kid and Stand-Up Tragedy. His evening-length works have been presented throughout the United States and Europe and include Word Becomes Flesh, Scourge, De/Cipher and No Man’s Land. Bamuthi’s piece, the break/s, co-premiered at the Humana Festival of New American Plays and the Walker Arts Center in the Spring of 2008. His latest full length group project Red, Black, Green: a blues premiered at Yerba Buena in October and is touring the country currently, as well his solo piece Word Becomes Flesh, recreated as a group piece is touring as a re-commission by the National Performance Network having just performed at the Under the Radar Festival at the Public Theatre. Bamuthi’s proudest work has been with Youth Speaks where he mentored 13-19 year old writers and curates the Living Word Festival for Literary Arts. He proudly served as a featured artist for the NAACP’s Centennial Anniversary Celebration during President Barack Obama’s Inaugural Exercises. Marc Bamuthi Joseph is the newly appointed Director of Performing Arts for Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Tree City Legends marks a continuation to his commitment to curating new voices along these lines, as well as his return to Intersection.
Taiyo Na, Performer, Musician, Open Process Workshop Teacher: Honored by the Governor and the State of New York for his “legacy of leadership to the Asian American community” in 2010, Taiyo Na is a singer, songwriter, MC and producer. His debut album Love Is Growth (2008) established himself as “a multidimensional talent with a unique creative voice that fuses the rhythms of the city that raised him with the soul of the Asian immigrant culture that birthed him” (OkayPlayer.com). The album features “Lovely To Me (Immigrant Mother),” an ImaginAsian Entertainment Original Song Contest Winner. Heralded by MTV as “the realest thing seen in a while,” the music video/short film has screened at film festivals across the country. In 2011 the title track of his 2nd album was released in Japan and the song hit #2 on Japan’s iTunes Hip-Hop charts. Born and raised throughout New York City, Taiyo first started writing rhymes at age 13; led to an early journey into spoken word poetry, performing nationally with the New York-based feedback poets’ collective (2000-2003) which featured Def Poetry Jam’s Beau Sia and Former Queens Poet Laureate Ishle Yi Park. By 18, he had shared stages with Maya Angelou and Janice Mirikitani, and at 19 was selected as one of the “25 Best Emerging Artists Under the Age of 25” by New World Theater. Today Taiyo is a staple performer for festivals, college circuits and venues throughout the country. Accomplishments include two featured concerts at Lincoln Center and an opening performance for Grammy Award-winning Eddie Palmieri at the Beyond Race Conference. A formally trained actor, he holds 2 years of study at the legendary Robert X. Modica’s Acting Studio at Carnegie Hall. He was also Artistic Director of the Sulu Series as well as Entertainment host for Asian America (WNYE), a weekly PBS Television show.
Juan Amador (DJ Wonway) continues his work with Campo Santo in merging music and theatre after collaborating, performing and composing for the Campo Santo projectBlock by Block, which premiered at the de Young Museum in November as part of Campo Santo’s Artist Fellowship led by Sean San Jose. As a DJ, MC, composer, performer, he is modern day renaissance man, all around b-boy and performer, Juan’s artistic resume includes emcee freestyle champion, educator, radio host of Thinkbeat Radio on KPFA and All Day Play FM. He began his theatrical career joining Pittsburg, California’s Teatro L.O.C.O.S while still in high school. Other projects include work with La Peña’s Hybrid Theater Ensemble, and various works with groups such as Intersection, SF State’s Playwriting program, recently as part of Cutting Ball Theater’s Vanguardia showcase of experimental Latino playwrights. Juan has also blended his passion for music and theater by creating Whose Rhyme is it Anyway? an improv troupe using freestyle rap as its focus. He performs weekly in clubs and venues throughout the Bay Area.
Joan Osato has played a pivotal role in local and national theater for well over a decade and has been an indispensable part of Youth Speaks since 2001, currently Producing Director for Youth Speaks and the Living Word Project and produces all Youth Speaks’ Festivals and Performance Events. She served as director of the Asian American Theater Company from 1997- 2000 and currently sits on their advisory board. She is self-taught photographer, born and raised in San Francisco. She works in medium film format, preferring to work with existing light, hand held. Her style is documentary, although her images exude mysterious or dreamlike qualities. Working in color, and black and white, the finished photographs are printed with an image size of 20″ x 20″. During the 1980’s her photography was exhibited at SF Camerawork, graced the album cover designs of such iconic San Francisco bands such as Faith No More and The Pop-o-Pies, and published in the LA Weekly. After a 25-year hiatus she picked up the camera again in 2008. Since then she has been considered for prestigious awards such as the Prix de la Photographie, and was chosen out of a field of over 290 visual artists for an Exhibition in The Bay Area Currents 2009 at ProArts Gallery. Her work has been exhibited at the Meridien Gallery and Ictus in San Francisco, and featured in publications (Koream Magazine and Artslant, Juried Exhibit Winner in Photography). Recently she has worked on a multitude of collaborative projects for theater both as the Producer and as a Visual Designer. These included the World Premieres of War Peace: The One Drop Rule (Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans), Mirrors in Every Corner (with Evan Bissell, Intersection), and Monday Golden Sun (Brava).
Dirty Boots is a multi-instrumentalist trio from San Francisco. Members Gyasi Ross(Guitar), James Dumlao (Drums), and Rachel Lastimosa (Bass/Piano) met each other through a vocal-jazz ensemble in college. Together they started a band that focused primarily on three-part harmonies and dynamic songwriting. Their musical influences include jazz, hip-hop, indie, and soul, however, it is difficult to generalize their unique sound. They have performed in many San Francisco venues such as The Great American Music Hall, Elbo Room, Red Devil Lounge, Poleng Lounge, Pier 23, Rockit Room, Bruno’s, Broadway Studios, Hotel Utah, El Rio, Jack Adams Hall, Amnesia, and many more. Their first Full Length Album “Where We Go” was just released.
RELATED EVENTS
Living Altar Memorial, Memorials and Legends:
Community Writing and Music Workshops
Intersection for the Arts will collaborate with 6th Street neighborhood groups: West Bay and Bindlestiff Studio to offer free writing and music making workshops headed by Lead Artists, Dennis Kim and Taiyo Na. Utilizing their performance and musicianship skills to create writing and artwork responding to the themes of family loss and the making of legends, participants will create personalized memorial cards and altarpieces, culminating in a public exhibition and incorporated into Tanya Orellana’s scenic design. This living altar will be on display, and will be worked and performed with throughout the run of the play.
Cities In Portraits: Photo Installation
Visual Designer Joan Osato creates an installation of city portraits and neighborhoods to accompany the aesthetic and design of Tree City Legends. This is the fourth in a series of Photo Collections created around new plays, following the Photo Collection of Portraits created for Mirrors In Every Corner by Chinaka Hodge. Images can also be found online at http://web.me.com/joan.osato.
ABOUT CAMPO SANTO
Campo Santo has spent over 15 years developing and presenting new plays. It has created a body of work through ongoing, long term relationships with some of the country’s best playwrights including, Philip Kan Gotanda, Jessica Hagedorn, Naomi Iizuka, Octavio Solis and Erin Cressida Wilson. In this process of continuing to experiment and explore, Campo Santo with Intersection, has been able to create opportunities for the first plays of some of the most important writers outside of the theatre genre, including Jimmy Santiago Baca, Junot Diaz, Dave Eggers, Denis Johnson, Greg Sarris, and Vendela Vida. The result has been more than 45 new plays. In committing also to the art of younger writers, Campo Santo has been fortunate to meet three unique talents in Chinaka Hodge, Sharif Abu-Hamdeh, and Dennis Kim. The aim is to work with writers from a wide array of mediums and backgrounds to inform the next generation of theatre makers and audiences as artists like Jessica Hagedorn and Ntozake Shange did in their seminal works, and then later in their new theatre pieces with Campo Santo (Hagedorn in 2004 and 2006 and Shange in 2007).
ABOUT THE LIVING WORD PROJECT
The Living Word Project (LWP) Created in 1999 by Youth Speaks/LWP Artistic Director Marc Bamuthi Joseph, LWP is made up of two dozen writers, performers, designers and collaborators ranging from 19 to 45 years of age who create cutting-edge work that raises social consciousness as it generates transformative aesthetics in spoken word and hip-hop theatre. Based in San Francisco, LWP utilizes urban hip-hop aesthetics, educational liberation pedagogy by Paolo Freire, a populist theatre framework inspired by Augusto Boal, and a methodology that includes dance, music, and film, with an emphasis on spoken storytelling. LWP provides apprenticeship and guidance to Youth Speaks writers of great promise who have moved beyond the 13-19 years old demographic of that organization, thus evolving artist-activists toward sustainable artistic and careers.
The Living Word Project, Campo Santo and Intersection have been working together to support, develop and help bring to life new voices together since 1999 with the formation of Intersection’s Hybrid Project. Together they have developed and produced two Hybrid Festivals of New Work; premiered new work at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and at Intersection together since 2001; presented a year long residency of new works; developed and produced Chinaka Hodge’s Mirrors In Every Corner; and more importantly are continuing this ongoing relationship in search of the next voices, aesthetics and communities for live performance. Currently they are in the initial stages of seeding Chinaka Hodge’s follow up play- Mehserle/Watts Up.
ABOUT INTERSECTION FOR THE ARTS
Intersection for the Arts is San Francisco’s oldest alternative non-profit art space (est. 1965) and has a long history of presenting new and experimental work in the fields of literature, theater, music and the visual arts, and also in nurturing and supporting the Bay Area’s cultural community through service, technical support, and mentorship programs. Intersection provides a place where provocative ideas, diverse art forms, artists, and audiences can intersect one another. Intersection’s Theatre Program is well established especially in the fields of new work development (more than 45 world premiere plays with Campo Santo), multi-disciplinary work (dance theatre group the ESP Project is just premiered their new piece christening our new performance space at 5M in the Chronicle Building as part of their 7th year in residence with Intersection); experimental merging of theatrical forms (more than 75 new works have been developed through the Hybrid Project including our ongoing relationship since 2001 with Marc Bamuthi Joseph and the Living Word Project); and a history of investment in long term relationships developing, supporting and premiering works with artists throughout the years including Claudia Bernardi, Ala Ebtekar, Whoopi Goldberg, Joe Goode, Margo Hall, Rhodessa Jones, Marcus Shelby, Howard Wiley, and countless others. At Intersection, experimentation and risk are possible, debate and critical inquiry are embraced, community is essential, resources and experience are democratized, and today’s issues are thrashed about in the heat and immediacy of live art. www.theintersection.org
CALENDAR LISTING
Event: Tree City Legends
The World Premiere of a new performance piece with live music by emerging playwright and musician Dennis Kim, directed by Marc Bamuthi Joseph, and the third installment of Intersection for the Arts’ and Resident Theatre Company Campo Santo’s Next Series.
Date & Time: February 16 – March 04 (Thursdays-Saturdays) at 8PM
Press Opening: February 20, 2010 at 8pm
Featuring: Juan Amador (DJ Wonway), Dennis Kim, Taiyo Na, Sean San Jose
Live Music: Dennis Kim and the band Dirty Boots (James Dumlao, Rachel Lastimosa, Gyasi Ross)
Visual Arts Installation by: Photographer by Joan Osato
Collaborative Team: Alejandro Acosta (Sound Designer), Melvign Badiola (Stage Manager), Christina Dinkel (Costume Designer), Noelle Durant (Production Team), Ben Fisher (Assistant Director), Pak Han (Production Photographer), Tanya Orellana (Scenic Designer), Darl Andrew Packard (Lighting Designer)
Cost: $20 – $25 sliding scale (your choice)
Tickets & Information: (415) 626-3311 x109,
www.theintersection.org, or www.brownpapertickets.com/event/221342
PHOTOS
All images were taken by Joan Osato. For hi-res images, please contact Anthem Salgado at anthem@theintersection.org.
