Theatrical Jazz Master Class with Sharon Bridgforth

Sunday, December 4, 2016 10:00 am-2:00 pm

[ The Louis Bluver Theatre - 341 S. Hicks Street ]

Click [here] to RSVP

Leeway presents Theatrical Jazz Master Class: Developing the Artist's Practice of Building Community with Sharon Bridgforth

Put your practice into motion! In this class, participants will be asked to write (in any form) based on a personal account or experience, and then develop that text through improvisation, embodiment exercises, and the exploration of the relationship between art and their lives.

This event is for activists, artists, and scholars who are interested in strengthening their ability to be present, listen deeply, improvise and collaborate. The goal is to build, nurture, and celebrate liberation and dignity of all people through the practice of personal excavation, creative process, collective witnessing, and art making.

This workshop is free, but space is limited. This event is wheelchair accessible. ASL (American Sign Language) interpretation available with notice prior to November 28 – There will be an option to request when reserving a ticket. 

About Sharon Bridgforth

A resident playwright at New Dramatists since 2009, Sharon Bridgforth is a 2016 Doris Duke Artist. She collaborates with actors, dancers, singers and audiences live during performance as she composes moving soundscapes of her jazz/ritual texts. Recipient of the MAP Fund and the National Performance Network Creation Fund, Sharon is a 2016 Creative Capital awardee for her project dat Black Mermaid Man Lady, Her work has been presented by Links Hall, Pillsbury House Theatre, The New Black Fest and New York SummerStage Festival. She has served in residence at: International Development Exchange; allgo, statewide queer people of color organization; Brown University’s MFA Playwriting Program; University of Iowa’s MFA Playwrights Program; The Theatre School at DePaul University; and The Department of Performance Studies at Northwestern University. Voted top 25 Favorite LGBT Artists/Campus Pride HOT LIST and Autostraddle’s 100 LGBTQ Black Women You Should Know, Sharon is the RedBone Press author of love conjure/blues and the Lambda Literary Award-winning the bull-jean stories. Her performance script delta dandi, is published in solo/black/woman: scripts, interviews and essays, Eds. E. Patrick Johnson and Ramon Rivera-Servera, Northwestern University Press, 2014. Sharon, Omi Osun Joni L. Jones and Lisa L. Moore are co-editors of Experiments in a Jazz Aesthetic: Art, Activism, Academia, and the Austin Project, University of Texas Press. Sharon is one of the subjects in: Dr. Matt Richardson’s, The Queer Limit of Black Memory – Black Lesbian Literature and Irresolution, The Ohio State University Press; Francesca Royster’s Queering the Jazz Aesthetic: An Interview with Sharon Bridgforth and Omi Osun Joni Jones, in Volume 25, Issue 4, December 2013, Journal of Popular Music Studies; and Omi Osun Joni L. Jones’s Theatrical Jazz: Performance, Àṣẹ, and the Power of the Present Moment, The Ohio State Press, 2015. Sharon's Finding Voice: Virtual Workshop Series course is available online thanks to Baladé Black.

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