Word Becomes Flesh

Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Artistic Director (The Living Word Project)

Joan Osato, Producing Director

Written and Directed by Marc Bamuthi Joseph

Word Becomes Flesh is a fluid evening-length choreopoem written in the form of a narrative verse play. Presented as a series of performed letters to an unborn son, the piece uses poetry, dance and live music to document nine months of pregnancy from a young single father's perspective. These performed letters incorporate elements of ritual, archetypes, and symbolic sites within the constructs of hip hop culture. Directed by Marc Bamuthi Joseph, and featuring Daveed Diggs, Dahlak Brathwaite, Dion Decibels, Khalil Anthony, Mic Turner and B.Yung, this Re-Creation of Word Becomes Flesh is commissioned by the National Performance Network Re-Creation Initiative, La Peña Cultural Center, Painted Bride, Dance Place and Youth Speaks with principal development support from Z Space Studios in San Francisco.

Word Becomes Flesh was originally commissioned by La Peña Cultural Center and premiered in November 2003 at the Alice Arts Center (Oakland, CA) and subsequently toured through 2007 nationwide to venues including Bates Dance Festival (Lewiston, ME), ODC Theater and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco, CA), On the Boards (Seattle, WA), New World Theater (Amherst, MA), Dance Theater Workshop (New York, NY), Live Arts Festival (Philadelphia, PA), Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago, IL), University Musical Society (Ann Arbor, MI), Miami Dade College (Miami, FL), and Dance Place (Washington, DC).

Considered the seminal work of Marc Bamuthi Joseph and The Living Word Project, this piece was chosen by the National Performance Network for its 25th Anniversary Re-Creation Initiative supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. Word Becomes Flesh is a National Performance Network (NPN) Re-Creation Fund Project sponsored by La Peña Cultural Center (Berkeley, CA) in partnership with Painted Bride (Philadelphia, PA), Dance Place (Washington, DC), Youth Speaks (San Francisco, CA) and NPN. This project has been made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts as part of American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius. For more information: www .npnweb .org.

The Laney College presentation is made possible in part by the James Irvine Foundation, the Clorox Foundation and the Kenneth Rainin Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Performance Network’s Re-Creation Fund

Marc Bamuthi Joseph (Artistic Director) is one of America’s vital voices in performance, arts education, and artistic curation. In the Fall of 2007, Bamuthi graced the cover of Smithsonian Magazine after being named one of America’s Top Young Innovators in the Arts and Sciences. He is the artistic director of the 7-part HBO documentary “Russell Simmons presents Brave New Voices” and an inaugural recipient of the United States Artists Rockefeller Fellowship, which annually recognizes 50 of the country’s “greatest living artists”. He is the 2011 Alpert Award winner in Theater.

After appearing on Broadway as a young actor, Joseph has developed several poetically based works for the stage that have toured across the U.S., Europe, and Africa. These include Word Becomes Flesh, Scourge, and the break/s, which co-premiered at the Humana Festival of New American Plays and the Walker Arts Center in the Spring of 2008. Bamuthi’s Word Becomes Flesh was re-mounted in December 2010 as part of the National Endowment for the Arts’ “American Masterpieces” series, and will tour throughout North America and Hawaii through 2013. Mr. Joseph’s current evening length project, red black and green: a blues documents the eco-equity movement towards green collar jobs in Black neighborhoods. In addition, Joseph wrote the commissioned libretto, Home in 7 for the Atlanta Ballet in 2011, and is directing Dennis Kim’s Tree City Legends at Intersection for the Arts in 2012.

The Living Word Project (LWP) is the resident theater company of Youth Speaks, committed to producing literary performance in the verse of our time. Aesthetically urban, pedagogically Freirean, LWP derives personal performed narratives out of interdisciplinary collaboration. Though its methodology includes dance, music, and film, the company’s emphasis is spoken storytelling. LWP creates verse-based work that is spoken through the body, illustrated by visual and sonic scores, and in communication with the important social issues and movements of the immediate moment. LWP is the theater’s connection from Shakespeare’s quill to Kool Herc’s turntables; from Martha Graham’s cupped hand to Nelson Mandela’s clenched fist: a new voice for a new politic.

Black Choreographers Festival: Here & Now ~ 2012 is presented by: The African & African American Performing Arts Coalition (Aaapac) a S. F. based non-profit organization, founded in 1995 to create performance opportunities for African and African American performing artists as well as produce shows that reflect the aesthetic and cultural representation of the African and African American experience. K*Star*Productions was founded in 1996 to make cultural exchange experiences accessible to the community at large with a focus on African-American constituents.

La Peña Cultural Center is a not for profit organization whose mission is to promote peace, social justice and cultural understanding through the arts, education and community action. La Peña was founded in 1975 in response to the military coup that overthrew the socialist government of Salvador Allende in Chile on Sept. 11, 1973. La Peña is located at 3105 Shattuck Ave. in Berkeley, 2 blocks from the Ashby BART. Visit us online at www.lapena.org for a calendar of our monthly events, children’s programs, exhibits, and classes.

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