Nexthetics

Since 2007 OSF has offered a variety of hip-hop and spoken word aesthetics programs, events, and explorations at OSF. Below you’ll find a brief history of these events.

Open Mic's and Poetry Slams

OSF has been producing poetry slams and open mics since 2007. We began with an open mic as part of our first Hip-hop Boot Camp. We then collaborated with local multi-media venue and produced live streamed poetry slams with music and poetry features. Later we collaborated with another local business to create Stillwater Slams.

More recently Hip-Hop Poetry Open Mic events have become part of our pilot program, OSF Presents, a program that provides artists who have performed at OSF to have more opportunity to share their art with audiences.

In 2012 OSF presented three Open Mic events in March, April and May. We look forward to presenting more of these events in the upcoming seasons.

2011 Mixing Texts

Mixing Texts is our annual OSF convening where expert hip-hop theater practitioners and OSF company members mix and re-mix aesthetics, share skills and vocabulary, and develop new work. Our 2011 convening was August 30-September 5, and featured guest artists Aaron Jafferis, Christopher Edwards, Adam Matta, Roberta Burke, and Full Circle Productions with Ana Garcia (Rokafella), Jennifer Viaud (Lady Beast)  Raymond Abbiw (Spex), Rafael Williams (Raf), Gabriel Dionisio (Kwikstep) and Jerry Valme.  We began the week with our OSF documentary on Nexthetics and a conversation where we got to know our guest artists better.  Rehearsals were open for observation by company members.  We blogged about the process, sharing videos and pictures, and offering a window into the process.  There was an atelier where we collaborated with company, concentrating on delivering text and beat-boxing.  We also did a hip-hop dance 101 movement tutorial which had adult and youth participants from the company and community. For most of the week we workshopped two pieces, “Innaviews” and “How to Break” which were presented to an invited audience on September 5.

2010 Mixing Texts

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival produced its fourth Mixing Texts convening from October 8 to 14. The week long convening explored the exciting intersection of nexthetics (the term for hip-hop and spoken word aesthetics created at 2003 Ford Foundation Future Aesthetics conference) and classical theatre with expert practitioners. The hip-hop theater guest artists were Kim Euell, Aaron Jafferis, Kwikstep, Rokafella, Christopher Edwards, Daniel Banks, Chadwick Boseman, Adam Matta, and Audra Polk. Rokafella, Matta and Kwikstep were part of the Green Show line-up that season. Rokafella was the choreographer of the 2010 production of Hamlet.

“When we get expert scholars and practitioners in a room to play, magic happens.  This is about relationship building.  Play commissions, collaborations between artists here and in different cities, the creation of a body of knowledge for education purposes. We know we’re successful because of the local and national impact.” said producer Claudia Alick.

2009 Mixing Texts

The 2009 participants were: Claudia Alick and OSF actors Danforth Comins, Kevin Kenerly, Terri McMahon, René Millán, Sarah Rutan, John Tufts and Tyrone Wilson; guest artists were Kamilah Forbes, Joe Hernandez-Kolski, Rickerby Hinds, Baruch "Baba" Israel, Nikki Klaymoon (Nicole Smith), Al Letson, Morganics and Steven Sapp.

2008 Mixing Texts

For the second year, OSF produced a multi-day exploration of Nexthetics (hip-hop aesthetics) and how it connects with classical theater entitled "Mixing Texts". This collaborative and intensive five-day lab involving Festival actors and guest artists was held November 1-5. The 2008 participants were: OSF actors Mahira Kakkar, René Millán, Jeany Park, Edgar Miguel Sanchez, Kimberly Scott, Neil Shah, Tyrone Wilson and Artistic Associate Claudia Alick; guest artists were Baba Brinkman, Reg e Gaines, Aaron Jafferies, Angela Kariotis, Nikki Klaymoon (Nicole Smith), Al Letson, and Adam Matta.

We held a number of events, workshops and explorations including:

• Angela Kariotis, Artistic Associate at Plays for Living, held a workshop where we used dynamic dialogue about issues we cared about to create original text and finally group performance pieces. 
• Several community events were held. 
• In order to fully explore the different forms nexthetics can inhabit in theater we held readings of scripts in development as well as devising original pieces. 
• To avoid the trap of elevating one aesthetic over another, reciprocal skill sharing was a core element of our work together. Judy Kennedy, an expert with decades of experiences with early dance and OSF, taught a Renaissance dance workshop including history and several Morris dance types. Nikki Klaymoon tutorial on the history of hip-hop dance and its many forms included the core elements of breaking, house, and pop-locking. Then we got on our feet and mixed them. 
• Our last days were spent devising and rehearsing work. Nexthetics is a form that can only truly be real-ized on its feet. We staged an excerpt of Al Letson’s “Julius X” a combination of Shakespeare’s Julius Cae-sar and the Malcolm X story using music, poetry, and dialogue. 

2007 Mixing Texts or Hip-hop Boot Camp

The first OSF hip-hop boot camp was held in October 2007. The four-day intensive workshop provided an oppor-tunity for expert practitioners to explore the intersection of nexthetics and classical theatre. Guest artists and ac-tors worked together with Shakespearean sonnets and text from Love’s Labor’s Lost, workshopped excerpts of original adaptations and plays from guest artists and other nexthetic playwrights, and held round table discussions on hip-hop education and the classics, developmental models, and creating a common language.

The goals and values of this exploration were:

• to honor OSF as a language-based theatre 
• to create relationships between nexthetics cultural producers (writers, performers, choreographers, di-rectors, producers, etc.), OSF’s cultural producers (performers, education staff, artistic staff, and board members), and the local community 
• to incubate material for future production 
• to develop language and concepts specifically around the conjunction of classical work and nexthetics work, while sharing knowledge and skills in a reciprocal exchange between all participants 

It is, to our knowledge, the first event of its kind.

Among the guest artists participating in the First Hip-Hop Boot Camp were Morganics, Al Letson, Baba Israel, Nicole Klaymoon, Steven Sapp, Rickerby Hinds, Kamilah Forbes, and Joe Hernandez-Kolski.

The OSF artists who participated included Claudia Alick, Scott Kaiser, John Tufts, Terri McMahon, Tyrone Wilson, Sarah Rutan, Danforth Comins, René Millán and Kevin Kenerly.