Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
POETiCAL, Not to be Played on the Radio at Ira Aldridge Repertory
For seven years, Calvin Manson, artistic director of the Ira Aldridge Repertory, interviewed people unused to tape recorders and probing questions: the homeless, the bullied, the racially profiled. To enter their world he disguised himself as a homeless man. Police stopped him several times and, at one point, almost went to jail.
Manson found that the ruling stereotypes were false. He was also struck continually by the “numbness” of the outside world to the plight of his subjects.
“POETiCAL,” a spoken-word choreo-poem assaults that insensitivity. “If a homeless man falls off an overpass, and there are people around,” it asks, “will they make a sound?”
“Nappy Headed Hoes,” for example, rips into radio-jock Don Imus’ notorious remarks about Rutgers’ women’s basketball team. The poem lambastes Imus and opens up the possible: “step outside the bonds of civilized beauty,” the female speaker urges: “be the woman you want to be…not the bitch of beauty!”
The poem also fits squarely into the oral tradition of “the Spoken Word.” Much more a performance than a mere reading Spoken Word incorporates physical gestures, looks, rhythms, and music. Whatever works to make its subject real and shared with an audience right now, this minute.
As the media have become more and more monolithic, and mainstream attitudes even more packaged, the Spoken Word – and hip hop and slam poetry – has come to the fore, providing commentaries about what you won’t hear on the radio: oppositional news.
Manson's “The Word,” excellently performed by Janice Edwards, is a highlight. An African-American woman tells of her history with the n-word, and the first time she uttered it, fairly late in life. And how, in our allegedly "post-racist" society," she felt.
In “Something Only a Black Woman Can Teach Her Son,” a mother must explain racial profiling; “Stop Lights is for the Enemy” is a man’s mantra to avoid being carjacked (during yellow lights he reaches for the automatic under his seat); “Tamika’s Story,” about a reformed crack addict, is a full length tragedy in maybe 50 lines.
Manson’s poems not only dig deep, with language both poetical and raw, they’re often quite funny, as when a woman says of Smokey Robinson, “he’s so fine, you could sip his bathwater through a straw!”
The overall quality of the poems is so striking, that the weaker ones stand out (and could be cut, since the evening runs a tad long).
The opening night performances were also uneven. Spoken Word means doing a poem, not mere recitations. Some in the cast had trouble releasing themselves through the language.
Janice Edwards has the feel throughout, as does Vimel Sephus (terrific as Virgil Tibbs in Ion Theatre’s In the Heat of the Night). Sephus performs one of the show’s signature poems: “I Read A Man Today.”
During his research, Manson came upon a homeless man, standing against a fence, who asked for spare change. “I turned around,” Manson writes in the program notes, ”and screamed: ‘dude you are asking me for money when you do not carry a sign?’
POETiCAL: Not to be Played on the Radio
- Educational Cultural Complex, 4343 Ocean View Boulevard, Mountain View
- $10 - $15
Manson assumed that words scribbled on a cardboard sign were part of the deal, the "entertainment."
“Between the time it took for the light to change from red to green,” writes Manson, “he was changing me.”
Playing through August 25.
Here's something you might be interested in.
POETiCAL, Not to be Played on the Radio at Ira Aldridge Repertory
POETiCAL, Not to be Played on the Radio at Ira Aldridge Repertory
For seven years, Calvin Manson, artistic director of the Ira Aldridge Repertory, interviewed people unused to tape recorders and probing questions: the homeless, the bullied, the racially profiled. To enter their world he disguised himself as a homeless man. Police stopped him several times and, at one point, almost went to jail.
Manson found that the ruling stereotypes were false. He was also struck continually by the “numbness” of the outside world to the plight of his subjects.
“POETiCAL,” a spoken-word choreo-poem assaults that insensitivity. “If a homeless man falls off an overpass, and there are people around,” it asks, “will they make a sound?”
“Nappy Headed Hoes,” for example, rips into radio-jock Don Imus’ notorious remarks about Rutgers’ women’s basketball team. The poem lambastes Imus and opens up the possible: “step outside the bonds of civilized beauty,” the female speaker urges: “be the woman you want to be…not the bitch of beauty!”
The poem also fits squarely into the oral tradition of “the Spoken Word.” Much more a performance than a mere reading Spoken Word incorporates physical gestures, looks, rhythms, and music. Whatever works to make its subject real and shared with an audience right now, this minute.
As the media have become more and more monolithic, and mainstream attitudes even more packaged, the Spoken Word – and hip hop and slam poetry – has come to the fore, providing commentaries about what you won’t hear on the radio: oppositional news.
Manson's “The Word,” excellently performed by Janice Edwards, is a highlight. An African-American woman tells of her history with the n-word, and the first time she uttered it, fairly late in life. And how, in our allegedly "post-racist" society," she felt.
In “Something Only a Black Woman Can Teach Her Son,” a mother must explain racial profiling; “Stop Lights is for the Enemy” is a man’s mantra to avoid being carjacked (during yellow lights he reaches for the automatic under his seat); “Tamika’s Story,” about a reformed crack addict, is a full length tragedy in maybe 50 lines.
Manson’s poems not only dig deep, with language both poetical and raw, they’re often quite funny, as when a woman says of Smokey Robinson, “he’s so fine, you could sip his bathwater through a straw!”
The overall quality of the poems is so striking, that the weaker ones stand out (and could be cut, since the evening runs a tad long).
The opening night performances were also uneven. Spoken Word means doing a poem, not mere recitations. Some in the cast had trouble releasing themselves through the language.
Janice Edwards has the feel throughout, as does Vimel Sephus (terrific as Virgil Tibbs in Ion Theatre’s In the Heat of the Night). Sephus performs one of the show’s signature poems: “I Read A Man Today.”
During his research, Manson came upon a homeless man, standing against a fence, who asked for spare change. “I turned around,” Manson writes in the program notes, ”and screamed: ‘dude you are asking me for money when you do not carry a sign?’
POETiCAL: Not to be Played on the Radio
- Educational Cultural Complex, 4343 Ocean View Boulevard, Mountain View
- $10 - $15
Manson assumed that words scribbled on a cardboard sign were part of the deal, the "entertainment."
“Between the time it took for the light to change from red to green,” writes Manson, “he was changing me.”
Playing through August 25.
Comments