Fela!, the critically acclaimed musical that had audiences on their feet during its world premiere last summer at Off-Broadway’s 37 Arts, will arrive on Broadway this fall where it begins performances at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre (230 West 49th Street) on Monday, October 19. The official opening is set for Monday, November 23. This new musical, based on the life of groundbreaking African composer, performer and activist Fela Anikulapo Kuti, is directed and choreographed by Tony® Award-winner Bill T. Jones (Spring Awakening), with a book by Jim Lewis and Bill T. Jones. Sahr Ngaujah will return in the title role for which he received universal acclaim, while the world renowned Antibalas and other members of the NYC Afrobeat community, under the direction of Aaron Johnson, will again perform Kuti’s rousing music live onstage. Winner of this year’s Lucille Lortel Award for Best Musical, Fela! was conceived by Bill T. Jones, Jim Lewis and Steve Hendel.
In this revolutionary new musical, directed and choreographed by Tony® Award-winner
Bill T. Jones with a book by
Jim Lewis, audiences are welcomed into the extravagant, decadent and rebellious world of Afrobeat legend
Fela Anikulapo Kuti. Using his pioneering music (a blend of jazz, funk and African rhythm and harmonies), Fela! explores Kuti's controversial life as artist, political activist and revolutionary musician. Featuring many of
Fela Kuti's most captivating songs and
Bill T. Jones’s imaginative staging, Fela! is a provocative hybrid of concert, dance and musical theater.
Presented by Ruth & Steve Hendel and
Roy Gabay, Fela! will feature a multi-cultural cast led by
Sahr Ngaujah, who received an Obie Award for his performance in the title role Off-Broadway. Scenic and costume design is by
Marina Draghici, lighting design is by
Rob Wierzel, sound design is by
Rob Kaplowitz and projection design is by
Peter Negrini. Aaron Johnson and Jordan McLean have provided the musical arrangements.
Bill T. Jones (Conceiver / Director / Choreographer / Book Writer) is the recipient of a 2007 Tony® Award, 2007 Obie Award, and 2006 Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation CALLAWAY Award for his choreography for Spring Awakening; the 2007 USA Eileen Harris Norton Fellowship; the 2006
Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Choreography for The Seven; the 2005 Wexner Prize; the 2005 Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement; the Harlem Renaissance Award; the 2003 Dorothy and
Lillian Gish Prize; and the 1994 MacArthur “Genius” Award. In 2000, The Dance Heritage Coalition named
Mr. Jones “An Irreplaceable Dance Treasure.” Mr. Jones choreographed and performed worldwide with his late partner, Arnie Zane, before forming the
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in 1982. He has created more than 100 works for his company.
Jim Lewis (Conceiver / Book Writer / Additional Lyrics) Broadway credits include Chronicle of a Death Foretold (Tony®, Drama Desk Nominations), Dangerous Games (with
Graciela Daniele), Tango Apaisionado. Dance/Opera:
Paul Dresher’s The Tyrant; Ballet Hispanico’s Nightclub;
Philip Glass’ Les Enfants Terribles (BAM); PastFORWARD (
Mikhail Baryshnikov, BAM). Translations: Ionesco’s The Chairs; Ibsen’s Lady From The Sea. Dramaturge: House Arrest (
Anna Deavere Smith); Dream On Monkey Mountain (
Bill T. Jones); Art Spiegelman’s Drawn To Death; Dido And Aeneas (Spoleto);
Bill T. Jones 20th Anniversary Still/Here (BAM). Most recently: This Beautiful City with The Civilians, which had its NYC premiere in January at The Vineyard.
Anitbalas (Arrangements / Musicians) Credited with introducing Afrobeat to a new generation, this Brooklyn-based collective has released four critically-acclaimed albums since forming in 1998, and can been heard on numerous Afrobeat compilations. Antibalas has performed more than 700 concerts around the world including appearances at the Coachella, Newport and the Montreux Festivals.
Ruth & Steve Hendel (Co-Conceiver / Producer) Ruth’s Broadway credits include:
Mary Stuart, 33 Variations,
In The Heights; Passing Strange; Legally Blonde; Kiki & Herb Alive on Broadway; High Fidelity; The Lieutenant of Inishmore; Dirty Rotten Scoundrels; Caroline, Or Change; A Raisin in the Sun; Golda’s Balcony; Frozen; ‘Night Mother; Steel Magnolias; Barefoot in the Park; Metamorphoses. Off-Broadway:
Altar Boyz; Our Lady of 121st Street; The Exonerated; Red Light Winter; tick tick…Boom!. Los Angeles: As Much As You Can. Ruth is on the boards of the LAByrith Theater, The Play Company and the Board of Advisors of the Yale School of Drama; She is vice-chair, and Stephen is Treasurer of the Eugene O’Neill Theater in Waterford, CT. Stephen also serves on the boards of
The New Group, The
Culture Project,
Bill T. Jones / Arnie Zane Dance Company and on the Board of Visitors of the Yale School of Music. Ruth and Stephen have a wonderful family and love them very much.
Roy Gabay (Producer / General Manager) Producing credits include: The Little Dog Laughed; Metamorphoses; Frozen; A View From the Bridge (Tony® Award); How I Learned to Drive (Pulitzer Prize); Wit (Pulitzer Prize); Three Tall Women (Pulitzer Prize). Upcoming: Behind the Limelight; Cassandra’s Angel.
Fela!, a new musical based on the life of groundbreaking African composer, performer and activist
Fela Anikulapo Kuti, moves to Broadway. Performances will begin on October 19 at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre (230 West 49th Street, between Broadway and 8th Avenue) with an official opening set for Monday, November 23. For more information about Fela! please visit
www.FelaOnBroadway.com.
Fela Ransome Kuti was born in Abeokuta, Nigeria, north of Lagos in 1938. His father was a Christian schoolmaster, minister and master pianist and his mother was a world-recognized feminist leader, who was very active in the anti-colonial Nigerian women's movement during the struggle for independence.
Fela was educated in Nigeria amongst the indigenous elite. Ironically, many of his classmates in his Nigerian school would become the very military leaders he so vociferously opposed.
With medical aspirations for their offspring (Fela’s older brother. Koye, was to become a Deputy Director of the World Health Organization and his younger brother, Beko, President of the Nigerian Medical Association) in 1958 Fela's parents sent him to London for a medical education. Instead, he registered at Trinity College's school of music where he studied composition and chose the trumpet as his instrument. Quickly tiring of European composers, Fela, struck by
Miles Davis and
Frank Sinatra, formed the Koola Lobitos in 1961, and his band became a fixture in London's club scene. Two years later, Fela returned to Nigeria, restarted the Koola Lobitos, and became influenced by
James Brown. Trying to find an authentic musical voice, he added elements of traditional Yoruba, high life and jazz, and "Afrobeat" was born. In 1969, Fela's Koola Lobitos traveled to Los Angeles to tour and record. During his eight months in the US, with LA as a home base, Fela befriended Sandra Isidore, who introduced him to the writings and politics of Malcolm X, Eldridge Cleaver and other proponents of Black nationalism and Afrocentrism.
With this new politically explicit and critical worldview, Fela reformed the Koola Lobitos as Nigeria 70 and returned to Lagos. He founded a commune/recording studio called the Kalakuta Republic, complete with his own private nightclub, The Shrine, and Fela dropped his given middle name "Ransome," and replaced it with a Yoruba name "Anikulapo" (meaning "he who carries death in his pouch"). Playing constantly and recording at a ferocious pace, Fela and band (who were now called Africa 70) became huge stars in West Africa and beyond. His music served as a rallying cry for the disenfranchised, critiquing the military government, and made Fela not only a pop star but thrust him into political life. People took to the streets singing his songs and the military responded by viciously harassing Fela, jailing him and nearly killing him on several occasions.
In 1977, during a government-sanctioned attack on his Kalakuta Republic commune, Fela and other members of his commune were arrested; Fela himself suffered a fractured skull as well as other broken bones; a number of women living at Kalakuta were beaten and raped; and his 82-year old mother was thrown from an upstairs window, inflicting injuries that would later prove fatal. The soldiers set fire to the compound and prevented fire fighters from reaching the area. Fela's recording studio, all his master tapes and musical instruments and the only known copy of his self-financed film Black President were destroyed.
After the Kalakuta tragedy, Fela briefly lived in exile in Ghana, returning to Nigeria in 1978. A year later, he formed his own political party, MOP (Movement of the People) and ran for president in two elections, although his campaigning was consistently blocked by the military. As the '80s ended, Fela recorded blistering attacks against Nigeria's corrupt military government.
Fela Anikulapo Kuti was arrested more than two hundred times in his life, and charged with almost every conceivable crime, although only serving one eighteen month sentence in jail for a currency violation. Despite this constant harassment he continued to live in Nigeria even though, as an icon in the international world of rock and roll, soul, jazz and hip-hop, he could have at any point abandoned Nigeria and led the life of an international music superstar. His death on August 3, 1997 of complications from AIDS deeply affected musicians and fans internationally, as a unique and ineffable musical and sociopolitical voice was lost. In Nigeria one million people attended his funeral. His incredible body of work, almost 70 albums, is now available, through public demand, all over the world.
