For Immediate Release
October 3, 2008
Contact: Mona Baroudi, 415.615.2735
mona.baroudi@sbcglobal.net
Four Bay Area Artists and Spoken Word Slam Champions
Collaborate on a New Hip Hop Theater Piece
War Peace: The One Drop Rule
Directed by Marc Bamuthi Joseph and collaboratively written and performed
by Nico Cary, Rafael Casal, Daveed Diggs and Chinaka Hodge
Featuring award-winning tap sensation Jason Samuels-Smith
and an original score by the SF Jazz Youth All-Stars
Presented at the Living Word Festival
WHAT:
The Living Word Project is proud to present the premiere of War Peace: The One Drop
Rule, a youth driven hip hop theater piece that imagines the Bay Area as a potential war
zone in a time of protracted drought. War Peace is presented at the 7th Annual Living
Word Festival and is curated by acclaimed artist and activist Marc Bamuthi Joseph.
War Peace is collaboratively written and performed by Chinaka Hodge, Rafael Casal,
Daveed Diggs, and Nico Cary, and directed by Joseph. Now in their early 20s, these
four artists boast work published in journals such as McSweeney’s and Newsweek, hold
performance credits that include appearances on Russell Simmons’ Def Poetry for HBO,
and hold undergraduate degrees from Berkeley, NYU, and Brown. They all grew up
participating in programs by Youth Speaks, the nation’s leading nonprofit presenter of
spoken word performance, education, and youth development programs.
War Peace features an original score by the SF Jazz Youth All-Stars, while Emmy
award winning choreographer and tap sensation Jason Samuels-Smith joins the cast
and performs a percussive tap and modern movement vocabulary to underscore the
work’s spoken language.
“The Living Word Festival is committed to presenting groundbreaking new
interdisciplinary work rooted in spoken word,” said Festival Curator Marc Bamuthi
Joseph. “War Peace is another extraordinary new work that manipulates the spoken
word form and introduces other collaborators and artistic disciplines to complete their
narrative scope.”
War Peace is the Living Word Project’s eighth, verse-based interdisciplinary work, and
joins critical successes such as the break/s, In Spite of Everything, and the Robert
Moses’ Kin collaboration Cause. War Peace takes place at Theater Artaud on Thursday
and Friday, October 23 and 24.
Additional programming on October 23 is Unbuckled, Uncensored, a new solo work by
spoken word pioneer Regie Cabico, directed by playwright, poet, actor, director, and
founding member of the Pomo Afro Homos, Brian Freeman. In Unbuckled,
Uncensored, queer Filipino artist Cabico traces his life from his Catholic family roots and
dreams of Broadway musicals to the spoken word slam scene and back again.
Also on October 24 the Living Word Festival presents Animal Farm, a new work by
dancer and choreographer Jacinta Vlach and Liberation Dance Theater. This
collaboration with cinematographer Bruce Francis Cole and beat composer Willie Adams
takes its inspiration by the novel of the same name.
WHERE:
Theater Artaud
450 Florida Street, San Francisco
WHEN:
Friday, October 24 and Saturday, October 25
TICKETS:
$25 (adult)
$5 (youth)
415.863.9834
www.brownpapertickets.com
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, PLEASE VISIT WWW.YOUTHSPEAKS.ORG
War Peace Writer Biographies
Nico Cary is an internationally touring performer, poet, and educator and is a recent
graduate of the University of California, Berkeley. Part of the HBO-featured group iLLLiteracy, Nico has performed at colleges in over 100 cities, at venues ranging from arena
hip-hop concerts to educational conferences. He is a McNair’s Scholar and served as a
featured editor for Dave Eggers’ Best American Non-Required Reading (Houghton
Mifflin, 2002).
Chinaka Hodge, is a writer and spoken word artist. Originally from Oakland, California,
Chinaka graduated from New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study in
May of 2006, and was honored to be the student speaker at the 174th Commencement
exercise. She was the San Francisco Bay Area Teen Poetry Slam Champion in 2001, and
a member of team Berkeley/Oakland, winners of the (inter)National Teen Poetry Slam
and Festival in 2000. She published her spoken word chapbook, Know These Limbs, in
Fall 2002. Her most recent book, For Girls With Hips, released in May 2006, is in it’s
third publication. Chinaka was a member of the U.S. Artist Delegation to the World
Social Forum in Narobi, Kenya in early 2007.
She received co-writing credit for the stage production: Scourge, sponsored, in part, by
the Creative Work Fund, which opened in May 2005, in San Francisco. She was the
assistant director of Suzan Lori Parks’ 365 Plays, 365 Days, at its San Francisco debut in
November 2006. Chinaka was also a recipient of Dave Eggers’ 826Valencia young
author scholarship. Sample publications include the McSweeney’s sponsored anthology,
My Words Consume Me, and Newsweek Magazine. Her work has also been featured in
Teen People Magazine, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Oakland Tribune, Scholastic
Magazine, Current Magazine, The Annual Women of Color Film Festival, PBS, NPR,
KMEL, WBAR, WKCR, CNN, C-Span, KPFA and in two seasons of HBO’s Def Poetry.
Rafael Casal has won spoken word competitions all over the country; has been
repeatedly featured on HBO; and has had hiw his written work printed in numerous
different national publications. At fifteen he had already become one of the Bay area's
top young competitors in a rising underground culture of competitive spoken word called
Slam. By sixteen he represented the Bay Area at the National Youth Poetry Slam, and by
19 had two national Finalist titles under his belt, been featured on season 4 and 5 of
Russell Simmons' Def Poetry on HBO, and inked his first deal with Def Jam mobile. Over
the years Rafael has shared the stage with the likes of Common, Talib Kweli, Mos Def,
KRS-ONE, Floetry, Kanye West, Saul Williams, Alanis Morissette, De La Sol, Dead Prez, &
numerous others, performing in front of crowds of up to 30,000. He is currently finishing
up his debut record EP to be launched under his crew The Get Back, working with Marc
Bamuthi Joseph’s Living Word Project, creating music with legendary Bay Area Producer
One Drop Scott (3xcrazy, Too Short, E-40, Mac Mall, Mac Dre, Scarface, etc.) and
producing music for up and coming Bay Area artists. Currently Rafael is the Creative
Director for First Wave at University of Madison, Wisconsin.
Daveed Diggs is an Oakland based actor, educator, composer, and rap artist who
graduated with a BA in Theater Arts from Brown University in 2004. Since then he has
been seen on stage across the bay area. Some recent credits include The SF Playhouse
Six Degrees of Separation (Paul) and Jesus Hopped the A Train (Angel), Pacific
Repertory Theatre's Troilus and Cressida (Troilus) and The Comedy of Errors (Solinus
the Duke), The San Francisco Shakespeare Festival's The Tempest (Caliban/Ferdinand),
SHN's production of Holes (Sam/Armpit)at The Orpheum, and The Magic Theater's
Moving Right Along (Freddie) written and directed by Elaine May and Jeannie Berlin.
Daveed Diggs is currently producing work with Bay Area Hip Hop Collective The
Getback. Diggs also teaches Rap and Spoken word classes at James Lick Middle School
and at the Marsh Youth Theater and gives workshops throughout the Bay Area.
About the Living Word Festival
The Living Word Festival is an annual community gathering of artists, educators,
presenters and performers focusing on literary performance and literacy education.
Founded by Youth Speaks under the direction of Marc Bamuthi Joseph, the Living Word
Festival is committed to exploring new modes of literary performance, and to engaging
and supporting artists who are breaking the boundaries of hip-hop theater and spoken
word theater. This year’s Living Word Festival takes place October 17-26 in San
Francisco and Oakland and features new commissioned performance works, live music,
and a host of outreach activities that include workshops, speaker sessions, literary
panels, educational activities, and more.
Partners for this year’s Living Word Festival include Yerba Buena Gardens Festival,
MOAD, Ella Baker Center, Global Exchange and the SF Green Festival.