Author: garliacornelia

Our May Feature is Next week: Michael Gene Sullivan

Blackboard is about community and we are lucky enough be in one that goes beyond New York.  That is why it is so exciting that our May Feature Playwright, Michael Gene Sullivan is in from San Francisco!

We are really hoping to have the podcast equipment in by the time Michael has his reading next week.  Wouldn’t it be great to talk to him ?!?!

Michael and his wife Velina Brown were interviewed last year by “American Theatre Magazine”  – Check out the interview by clicking the title.

Make your $10 Reservation via Brown Paper Tickets here for the Monday, May 14th Feature!  

You can also RSVP here if you want to make your cash donation at the door.

Hope to see you there!

April 1: Weekly Inspiration: “Is anybody listening ?”

The shuttle from Grand Central to Times Square is almost always featuring at least one singer songwriter asking for a few dollars and sharing their gifts. It’s always hit or miss, but if I get a chance and like one or two, they’ll end up in that day’s Instagram story.

This is not to mention the performers within the subway itself.  

A trip last week to the Festival I had a hand in producing in Manhattan was almost musician free when a thin-framed man with Michael Jackson-esque sequined pants hopped on with a piece of paper folded in quarters, printing on one-side and scribbled notes on the other. His wardrobe was black and white and more worn than dirty. It’s rare that I can get a good look at the performers this way, but that day was different.

Weekly Inspirations are part of gifts I give to my patrons at every level.  This is the most basic gift that all patrons receive.

To Unlock the rest of this post, Join me on Patreon for as little as $1 / month, where all will be revealed … ?

 

 

Remembering St. Nick’s Pub

It was Friday morning about a week ago  and while in the middle of getting the word out about “48Hours in… EL BRONX”, that I receive a text from a friend,

“St Nick’s pub burnt down”.

I respond as only one does…

wtf!!!

I immediately text another friend, a musician who lives in the neighborhood and had the same affinity for the pub as I did.

She didn’t know yet, but made a call and within minutes confirmed the news, following up with photos of the building


“A firefighter died”

This was all just too much for me to take in.

Weeks before, I’d been in the neighborhood and noticed the pub opened.  It had been years since I’d seen the inside.  Reports were there was a movie being shot inside.  It was nice to see life in the tiny space again, even if it was just a few PAs and production equipment.  A flood of memories came to me.

My memories of the pub were many, especially when I lived on 148th and Broadway, during the beginning years of my MFA.

I’d also gone to St. Nick’s pub before I officially lived in the city, met a friend’s brother for drinks and had fallen in love with what Harlem was then.  I had no idea I’d live so close, but when I did turn out to be 3 blocks away, St. Nick’s became the only place at the time that I would tell friends to meet me.  This was years before Tsion or Harlem Public…

I drew my friends north by emphasizing how accessible St. Nick’s was from the ABCD and of course… the music… the reason you went to St. Nick’s pub…. The reason I went to St. Nick’s pub.

It was uptown, it was jazz and food on some nights… it was a home.  You saw people from the community and students from all over.  They knew the place to come for inexpensive drinks and good music.  I could have gone alone and found friends, (not only because I find friends wherever I go), but because St. Nick’s was that type of environment.

This story is of course developing.  The film was Edward Norton’s “Motherless Brooklyn”.  The firefighter who died, Lt. Michael Davison, was the father of 4 children.  I was not a mother when I frequented the pub, but I am a mother now.  I cannot imagine my children losing their parents in such a way.  I cannot imagine my children losing their parents period.  It’s not something you wish on anyone. (There’s a gofundme page for the firefighter’s family if you click on his name above).

Regarding the cause of the fire, I don’t know how it happened, but I know how I feel… sad.

Another piece of Harlem history is gone.

The next and most devastating phase following the fire was watching the building being torn down.  I watched on instagram and was grateful for once to be far from my old neighborhood instead of blocks away.  I don’t think I could bear passing the spot day after day.  I cringe at the thought of a luxury building going in the place where the 123 year old townhouse once stood.

For now, St. Nick’s website is still up, and it’s nice to see what they were – the schedule.. how busy it was… videos and more photos.  If nothing, it’s a nice place that serves as a sort of memorial.

Screen grab of www.stnicksjazzpub.net

I’m sharing my photos from January 18, 2009.  I was there with my dear friend from high school… my sister.  The photos below are of the atmosphere.

Take it in.

We were two young women on a Saturday night in Harlem.  There was music 7 days a week at St. Nick’s and Saturday starting around midnight was AFRICA NIGHT.  Abdoulaye Alhassane Toure was performing the night I took these photos.  I remember the woman getting up and just dancing.  She was free.  I remember photographing a friend I’d made from Harlem School of the Arts downtown the street.  St. Nick’s was for everyone and you felt that walking down those old cement stairs and through the old front door.

I want people to know what this space meant to others.  My story is of a graduate student making her way in the city… finding comfort in the nooks and crannies of her new neighborhood in the late 2000’s – her adopted home.

What’s yours?

 

 

 

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Tickets for “48Hours in…™EL BRONX” are on sale: April 8 and 9, 2018

Tickets for “48Hours in…™EL BRONX” are on sale!

How am I involved in this?

I am one of the Founding Producers of the OBIE Award Winning , Harlem9.

What is “48Hours in…™EL BRONX” ?

A collaboration between Pregones Theater PRTT and Harlem9, Producers of the OBIE Award Winning “48Hours in…™Harlem”, a twist on the traditional 24-hour play festival.  Our first collaboration with Pregones was in December 2016.

The April 8th and 9th performances will be our 2nd collaboration to achieve “48Hours in…™EL BRONX”.  The source materials and theme for the 2018 rendition of “48Hours in…™EL BRONX” takes a tour through some of the most memorable dance clubs in the Boogie Down’s history. Since the Bronx is known as the borough of music, the six clubs selected for this year’s celebration include:

  • Club 845 – the Prospect Ave home of Jazz and Be Bop in the 1950’s
  • Tritons – the 1960’s premiere live Latin music club
  • Disco Fever – the famed 1970’s South Bronx Hip Hop dance club
  • The Savoy Manor – the 70’s & 80’s stage of the likes of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five Live
  • G.T.’s – a cherished 1990’s Bronx LGBTQ dance club
  • Mexico in the BX – a series of Mexican music and dance clubs in the Bronx

You will certainly hear of Harlem9 again and again.  It is a pretty significant part of my life! 😉

Photos from “48Hours in…™EL BRONX” December 2016 / Photos by: Garlia Cornelia

I’ll post the final members of the ensemble in another post: be sure to stay tuned for more information.

In the meantime, check out this video, to learn a little more about the event and find out how much fun (and how little sleep), the 2016 Ensemble had!

TICKETS ON SALE HERE

C-MORE @ the cell 2018 : THREE Readings left! Ends March 28th

It is upon us!  The 3rd Annual C-MORE Festival!

March 18 – 28, 2018

the cell

How am I involved in this?  

I’m one of the producers! (Blackboard Plays is the organization I founded in 2008… yup.. almost 10 year anniversary!)

Here’s some official information…

Nancy Manocherian’s the cell (Artistic Director Kira Simring) in Chelsea, New York City has partnered with Liberation Theatre Company and Blackboard Plays to produce five new play readings as a part of the cell’s annual C-MORE Festival.

We’ve got 3 readings left!

Friday, March 23rd at 7:30PM

From Out Beyond My Shame by Shawn Nabors

directed by Christopher Burris

 Sunday, March 25th at 2:30PM

Restless Native by Germaine Netzband

directed by Kim Brockington

Wednesday, March 28th at 7:30PM

Quarters, Halves, and the Whole by Nathaniel Johnson

These readings are a culmination of the work done through Liberation Theatre’s Writing Residency Program.

 Tickets for these events are free.

We began the festival with a reading of Our Father by Liz Morgan directed by Mary Hodges on Sunday, March 18th at 2:30PM.

The second reading was from Blackboard Plays. Queen Nanny by Camille Darby directed by Miranda D. Haymon on Monday, March 19th at 7:30PM.  

Check it out on Broadway World HERE

A little more about C-MORE

Since it’s inception in 2016, the C-MORE festival has provided playwrights and theatremakers of color the opportunity to present work that they are passionate about and create visibility for underrepresented narratives.  This year, the cell has granted two companies that have been making immense strides in telling these stories, funding and materials to present their work.  Past C-MORE presentations have included a workshop production of The Year of the Bicycle by Joanna Evans, In the Southern Breeze by Jireh Breon Holder, Shoppin’ for N.I.G.G.A.S by Garlia Cornelia, The Marks You Leave by Tyler Andrew Jones, Lovely Send Anywhere by Douglas J.Cohen, and Lambs to Slaughter by Khalil Kain.

the cell (Founding Artistic Director Nancy Manocherian and Artistic Director Kira Simring) is a non-for-profit organization dedicated to the incubation and presentation of new works by emerging artists.  Founded in 2006, the cell has produced over a dozen critically acclaimed world premiere productions of new plays and musicals over the past 10 years including Sam’s Room, Bastard Jones, Crackskull Row, Hard Times: An American Musical and more.  The cell also features the jazz @ the cell series and has served as a home base for a large community of resident artists and organizations such as Blackboard Reading Series, Artists Without Walls (AWOW), Irish American Writers and Artists (AWOW), Sybarite5, Tribeca New Music, and New York Theatre Barn.

ABOUT Liberation Theatre Company

(Founder and Producing Artistic Director Sandra A. Daley) is a home for creative emerging black playwrights, providing resources to develop their work, nurturing and inviting them to express themselves in a supportive and focused environment. LTC brings together actors, directors, and playwrights to allow playwrights the room to learn and grow, culminating in their finest work, ready for production.

ABOUT Blackboard Plays

(Artistic Director Garlia Cornelia, Co-Curator Oneké Cummings) is devoted to Black playwrights throughout the African Diaspora. Since 2008 Blackboard has presented readings every second Monday of the month at the cell our home in Chelsea where we have been incubated as a resident series.

This is what Blackboard is all about!

Supporters and FUTURE supporters!  Blackboard is about development and not production… but what exactly does that mean?  Well… everyone needs a place to try out their stuff.  Everyone needs to hear feedback.  It is ALWAYS NEEDED and ALWAYS VITAL… and I get SO EXCITED when plays that Blackboard has featured go on to production, which is why I am so excited to share with you about James Anthony Tyler’s “Some Old Black Man” at 59 E 59!

Read more on our website!  

Your monthly support ensures that we continue to be a home for these writers on their road to the big productions they so deserve!

January was a great month for us! Re-Cap and more February prep!

We did something new in January: we had two readings!  It was wonderful connecting twice in one month.  We look forward to seeing you again @ the cell in February for Nike Kadri’s Feature.  

We’ve got a new energy in 2018 and so many wonderful things headed your way.  We appreciate your support and we hope that you will want to support us here and by attending a feature.

Thank you: September

Last week’s feature was Spectacular – we wil share photos soon and have a special new way to send patron postcards! So excited about this!

Just a note: our Instagram account was hacked.  We have lost access and have continued to attempt to get in to no avail.  We are certainly disappointed  and will give it a few more tries before re-building.

Does ‘DETROIT’ tell the story you want to see?

“DETROIT” opened yesterday —

By all means make your own decision on whether or not to see it, or where or not to like it…

Last week, I told you what I thought about the film after attending the Premiere with my brother in our home-city on Salon.com.

The flood of critique over the film encourages me.  Post-Detroit’s World Premiere of the film on Tuesday, July 25th, the headlines say it all...” ‘DETROIT’ Gives Very Little To The Black Community To Hold On To” on Vibe.com

or Angelica Jade Bastien’s Review on RogerEbert.com.  “Watching “Detroit” I realized that I’m not interested in white perceptions of black pain.”, she writes.

I left the theatre of two minds: happy to be with family in my ever-changing home-city but a little dumbstruck.  My brother and I walked out of the FOX theatre, the bustle of Hollywood around us.  We took a selfie to appropriately document our time as two adult-siblings hanging out and then walked through the neighborhood to a nearby bar, (reminding me of the metro area I was heading back to in a couple days), Queens Bar.

Queens Bar – Detroit, MI

We talked it out… amongst ourselves and friends we ran into, getting their take on the history of the city they knew from their parents who had lived through this experience, either riot or rebellion in their youth.  There was a lot of silence… what did we really just see… Something just didn’t feel quite right… the common thread tying most of the reviews and articles on the film together: “Detroit” was directed, written, produced, shot, and edited by white creatives who do not understand the weight of the images they hone in on with an unflinching gaze.”, writes Angelica.

John Eligon wrote in The New York Times, 

But with “Detroit,” she had to wrestle with how far to push reality — how to convey the real-life horror of racism, without exploiting black trauma. “It’s really a question of how do you humanize and how do you bring to life a situation,” Ms. Bigelow said. “I suppose you use a personal judgment, I guess.”

Personal Judgement or not, did Ms. Bigelow have the right to tell this story of a city fraught with a racial history goes back so far or so deep that many have forgotten.  As a Detroit native, am I interested in an outsider’s perspective?  I would have been more interested if an outsider had encouraged some home-city talent to be involved….AT THE VERY LEAST.  Who is going to stand up for Detroit?  If Ms. Bigelow was consulted by her friend (another Native Detroiter), professor and historian, Dr. Michael Eric Dyson, I would have liked to see a black producer line the stage at the FOX alongside the otherwise all-white team.

These things matter to me.

It is a basic representation issue.

The film’s screenwriter, Mark Boal made his own case on Vulture.  “…the events in Detroit are hard evidence of a cultural crisis that remains unresolved, of two Americas that still don’t know quite how to deal with each other.”

I could go so far as to inquire whether or not this extends into the production team.  If one truly understands what is happening in Detroit, then they understand the optics of opening a film introducing a crew of white creatives to a packed house crowd in a city that is 83% black.

COME. ON.

ok… I’m taking a deep breath here and maybe it’s best to just go to Danielle Eliska Lyle, fellow dramatist and Native Detroiter.  Danielle wrote an eloquent piece that appeared in Detroit Metro Times  this week and my words are starting to feel like broken records, so I’ll let others continue to break those records:

“I had a hunch the film would be problematic. It was confirmed when the film’s development team — the writers, producers, and cinematographers — were invited on stage: Everyone was white, with the exception of Detroit native Michael Eric Dyson, who introduced Bigelow.”

Danielle left before the film was over and I couldn’t blame her or any of the other people that walked out — it was hard to stomach much of it, especial in the #blacklivesmatter era.

But I usually forge through most things – good or bad – I have a stubborn spirit.

One week before the premiere, I attended a lecture at Charles Wright Museum of African American History.  I had just taken in the Detroit ’67 Perspectives Exhibit at Detroit Historical Museum (where I used to docent in middle school) and met a woman who led me to attend the talk on S.T.R.E.S.S.

Charles Wright Museum of African American History

I took in the city some more, visiting Great Lakes Coffee on Woodward Avenue.  I felt like I was back in New York at ‘sNice, a spot I used to frequent in the West Village during my MFA years on Bank Street.  It closed a couple years ago, but the vibe at Great Lakes was similar.  Open space and an atmosphere of productivity.  Some musicians played quietly behind me, others, likely Wayne State University students, worked on their laptop.  A young man approached me asking about my camera, as I was reviewing photos from the exhibit.  He wanted to know about an upgrade and what might be the best camera for him.  I helped how I could, pleased to make more contact with a gentle stranger.

Inside Great Lakes Coffee, Midtown, Detroit, MI

During the moderated Q and A, a woman stood up, she had been up for a job as a city planner in the 70s.   She  recounted how surprised a potential male colleague, I believe she said he was South Indian, was to see her, a black woman… moreover, a Detroiter.   She didn’t get the job.

I ask again… Who is going to stand up for Detroit if Detroiters of all backgrounds and socio-economic levels are continuously barred from positions of real change, influence and power.

[Cough… Dan… Cough.. Gilbert… Cough… Affordable… Cough… Housing].

Detroit is a city with such a diverse population that I’m not sure all stories will ever be given their justice, but one can try.  “DETROIT” tries… but ultimately, the subject of the city is such a sensitive one.

So “DETROIT” for me is a cautionary tale.  No matter how famous you are… part of that responsibility in my opinion is to employ others who could assist the justice to that piece.  It is looking at the whole of the picture.  An Academy award gives one an extraordinary amount of power… so what are you going to do with it…

Kathryn Bigelow wanted to get the conversation started… so the one she has unearthed is on representation… we’re back to that… we never really left it, she just reminded us, whether she meant to or not.

All photos aside from the poster by Garlia Cornelia.
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