Southern Rep & Junebug Productions Announces New HouseParty Series 5/21

Southern Rep and Junebug Productions announce a new HouseParty Series; a performance, music and dance event on May 21st at 10pm (to 2am) at The Candle Factory with the return of the Bronx-based performance ensemble UNIVERSES (who brought their critically claimed Ameriville to town in February) performing Live! From The Edge, with Master of Ceremonies Saddi Khali and DJ Bomshell Boogie, special guest Ray "Moose" Jackson - with more to come! Tickets are just 20 bucks, with cash bar offerings of cocktails & pizza.

This is theater in the truest, purest sense of the word. The actors use their voices, their hands, their feet, their bodies to make what is ultimately a joyful noise of hope and survival. - David Cuthbert WYES-TV "Steppin' Out" Theater Guy (Ameriville)
UNIVERSES returns to New Orleans by special arrangement with Ameriville producing partners Southern Rep, Junebug Productions, Ashé Cultural Center and Tulane University, Department of Theatre & Dance.

Steven Sapp, Mildred Ruiz-Sapp, Gamal Abdel Chasten, and Ninja make up Universes, whose work has toured across the U.S. and in 5 countries. Steven Sapp, a graduate from Bard College, is a playwright/actor. Mildred Ruiz-Sapp is part of this group as a playwright/actress/vocalist. Gamal A. Chasten is a songwriter /poet / screenwriter. Ninja (William Ruiz) is a playwright/director and also a graduate of Bard College. Universes is a National / International ensemble Company of multi-disciplined writers and performers who fuse Poetry, Theater, Jazz, Hip-Hop, Politics, Down Home Blues and Spanish Boleros to create moving, challenging and entertaining theatrical works. The group breaks the bounds of traditional theater to create their own brand, inviting old and new generations of theater crafters as well as the theater goers and new comers to reshape the face of American Theater.

SADDI KHALI writer/performer/photographer, the ultimate mix-master, refuses to be limited by genre. His poetry has appeared in the anthology "Dark Eros: Black Erotic Writings", "Obsidian", "Beyond the Frontier: African American Poetry for the 21st Century", "Be A Father To Your Child" and other national journals and anthologies. Saddi has rocked stages from HBO's Def Poetry Jam to the Apollo Theater's Salon Series and toured for 2 years with UPROOTED: The Katrina Project.

DJ Bomshell Boogie is a New Orleans native, and has been mixing since high school. She is self taught, and after coming back to New Orleans after Katrina, she has developed a name for herself starting with her weekly night at The Dragons Den. "From there she began to brand a style of djing that is Universal..." She appears every Monday through Friday on her own Mixshow on Power 102.9 and has spinned for Lil Wayne, R. Kelly and opened for Keyisha Cole at JazzFest.

Raymond "Moose" Jackson is a self-taught poet with a background in homelessness, combat medicine, a flirtation with the priesthood, train hopping, forest defense activism, and Buddhist meditation. He recently wrote an epic poem for theatre called Loup Garou, about the Louisiana werewolf who rails against ecological disaster.

Junebug Productions (JPI) is a professional African American arts organization located in New Orleans, Louisiana, produces, tours and presents high quality theater, dance and music that encourages and supports African Americans in the Black Belt South who are working to improve the quality of life available to themselves and others who are similarly oppressed and exploited. For the past 29 years, the company has toured the U.S. and performed internationally with John O'Neal, Junebug's Artistic Director who co-founded the Free Southern Theater in 1963 as a cultural arm of the southern Civil Rights Movement. Junebug Productions is currently creating the Free Southern Theater Institute (FSTI) to codify the particular techniques, ethics, and aesthetics developed by FST and Junebug Productions. Artists from around the region and the nation will be able to come to New Orleans, learn the FST and JPI technique and work with the local community and artists. Junebug is currently offering the third of three pilot program courses, "From Community to Stage," bringing in artists to work with community residents, high school and university students.

Southern Rep celebrates its 23rd season as the region's premiere professional theatre, continuing to produce bold world and regional premieres under the artistic leadership of Aimée Hayes, with Managing Director, Marieke Gaboury. In addition to its exciting Mainstage offerings; Southern Rep continues to offer educational programs such as free student matinees, $10 student rush tickets and Academy SRT; "Free Night of Theatre"; as well as providing an artistic home to new works in development in the New Play Bacchanal.

Southern Rep continues to show that it is staging the most important, challenging, and downright mesmerizing pieces of theater New Orleans audiences are graced to experience. - Theodore P. Mahne, The Times-Picayune Lagniappe

For more information, visit www.southernrep.com.

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