Coming to the Redfern: The Premiere Series, Word Becomes Flesh

From Jackie Hooper, Redfern Arts Center:

The Keene State College Theatre and Dance Department will present a new play festival called The Premiere Series from October 3 to 24. The Premiere Series consists of four original plays written by Keene State students with each play to be performed twice as a staged reading as follows:

• Thanksgiving by Taylor Jorgensen on Thursday and Friday, October 3 and 4;
• The Speck in My Eye by Sarah Croitoru on Wednesday and Thursday, October 9 and 10;
• Love, Life and Liberty by Hersch Rothmel on Wednesday and Thursday October 16 and 17;
• Bigfoot by Daniel Bullard on Wednesday and Thursday, October 23 and 24.

All plays begin at 7:30 p.m. in the Wright Theatre of the Redfern Arts Center on the KSC campus. Tickets are $10 for adults, $8 for senior citizens and youth, and $6 for Keene State students. KSC students, who wish to see all four plays, may purchase a 4-play package for $8. For tickets, call the Box Office at 603-358-2168 or visit www.keene.edu/racbp.

The Premiere Series, begun in 1989, is a new-play development program that is a part of the Theatre and Dance Department’s production series. This year’s festival was a competition among 24 KSC students enrolled in the spring 2013 Playwriting class taught by Professor Daniel Patterson.

Many actors, who include KSC faculty, staff and community members as well as students, were cast in more than one of plays to be presented during The Premiere Series.

For more on The Premiere Series, including the cast of each reading, see the full release at the keene.edu news site.

Also from Jackie:

Pregnancy from a young single black father’s perspective is the subject of_Word Becomes Flesh _to be presented Wednesday, October 2, at 7:30 p.m. in the Main Theatre of the Redfern Arts Center. Written and directed by nationally acclaimed performer, educator, and artistic curator Marc Bamuthi Joseph and performed by San Francisco’s The Living Word Project, this ensemble piece uses poetry, dance, hip-hop and live music to tell the provocative and absorbing tale of fatherhood from a black man’s perspective, embodying the complexities surrounding race and gender in the United States.

Tickets are $20 for adults; $13 for senior citizens, children, and Keene State alumni; and $5 for KSC students. For tickets, call the Box Office at 603-358-2168 or order online at www.keene.edu/racbp.

Two free community programs are scheduled the day of the October 2 performance. A pre-show talk on masculinity and gender norms with Keene State College Assistant Professor of Communication **Jamie Landau** will take place at 6:30 p.m. in the Harry Davis Room off the lobby of the Redfern Arts Center. A post-show lobby talkback with the artists follows the performance.

The ensemble of _Word Becomes Flesh _is also in residency with several KSC departments and community groups, leading workshops and discussions about their work and creative process.

The five performers — Dahlak Brathwaite, Daveed Diggs, Khalil Anthony, Michael Wayne Turner III and B. Yung — all of whom have their own careers as musicians and spoken word artists, take turns leading the 12 movements that make up the show. Through the show, the DJ Dion Reiner-Guzman, backs the performers with musical riffs, rhythmic pulses, and the constant thump of a child’s heartbeat.

Word Becomes Flesh is a universal birth story, a piece that challenges the notions of patriarchy and the perception of how present a father is during pregnancy and childbirth.

The Redfern performance of Word Becomes Flesh is funded in part by the Expeditions program of the New England Foundation for the Arts, made possible with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, with additional support from the six New England state arts agencies.