Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts will present red, black & GREEN: a blues, 1/20

Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts will present red, black & GREEN: a blues by Marc Bamuthi Joseph on Friday, Jan. 20, at 7:30 p.m. in the Virginia G. Piper Theater.

Tickets are available for $29 or $39 online at www.ScottsdalePerformingArts.org or through the Patron Services Box Office at (480) 499-TKTS (8587). As part of The Center’s Parent + Teen Night Out Series, any adult who purchases a ticket to this performance will receive one ticket free for an accompanying teenager (ages 13–19). Parent + Teen tickets must be purchased by phone.

With a stage set by artist Theaster Gates, who also performs as part of the four-person cast, this exciting new kinetic performance by Marc Bamuthi Joseph mixes hip-hop music, poetry and movement to jumpstart a conversation about environmental justice, social ecology and collective responsibility in the climate-change era.

The creation of rbGb utilized community input as an artistic resource material, specifically the voices of people often left out of discussions about “living green.” Research for the performance took place through Life is Living, a series of community eco-festivals in urban parks nationwide featuring art, activism and education. Interviews, poems, films and murals from Life is Living were translated into text, choreography and imagery that express the challenge of living green where violent crime and poor education pose a more imminent danger than ecological crisis, and that reveal emerging definitions of environmentalism in these communities.

Set into Gates’ malleable stage installation of repurposed building materials and clay objects, and heightened by Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi’s vivid films and vibrant graffiti murals from Life is Living, the poetry and performance in rbGb put forward the idea that valuing your own life, and the life of your community, is the first step to valuing planet Earth.

Marc Bamuthi Joseph is one of America’s vital voices in performance, arts education and artistic curation. In 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 seven-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.” In May 2011, Bamuthi was named this year’s Alpert Award winner in theater.

red, black & GREEN: a blues was created by Marc Bamuthi Joseph/The Living Word Project, directed by Michael John Garcés and produced by MAPP International Productions. It is performed by Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Theaster Gates, Traci Tolmaire and Tommy Shepherd aka Emcee Soulati. The presentation was made possible by the MetLife Community Connections Fund of the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project. Major support for NDP is also provided by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation with additional support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Boeing Company Charitable Trust.

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