Tag: hip-hop

A graduate of Cornish College of the Arts, this article from the Cornish "Insight" magazine, looks at some of the collaborations that led to the genesis of The Unfortunates.

Our 2012 Annual Ashland Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration kept up with a tradition of having hip-hop in the program. This year it was Ben Baden’s original rap with beats from DJ Omari and Aisha Wand’s dance troupe Ashland Danceworks.

We pulled together at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival to workshop a play started in OSF’s Midnight Projects last year The Unfortunates. The workshop included Dr. Lue Douthit, head of our literary department and expert dramaturg, Shana Cooper, director, Jacob Padron, associate producer working on musicals and Claudia Alick associate producer working on hip-hop projects. We read the play with live music, mapped it out, and explored it’s structures determining where the gaps were.

Four decades ago, the Black Panthers and Puerto Rican Young Lords were young activists providing food and health care in their impoverished communities while in a desperate struggle to survive the systematic dismantling of their movements. Now they are 60-somethings untangling a traumatic past and an unclear future. In ensemble, OSF actors and UNIVERSES toggle between then and now in this meticulously researched, compelling work of fiction.

Dreams Come True! About 4 years back I imagined we’d produce cool hip-hop theater at Oregon Shakespeare Festival and somehow collect the intelligence and passion and knowledge of all the artists we’d work with and then connect it to education on a national level. (I tend to dream big) But check it out- BAM!