Support THE SCIENCE FICTION PROJECT - Become part of Modern Myth Making
Sunday, November 20th, 2016 Showtimes: 7PM (SOLD OUT) & 8:15pm tickets available. The performance time is 45 minutes with Q&A.
A collaboration between Ellen Sebastian Chang and Larry Reed
In Association with Amber McZeal, Black Spirituals and ShadowLight Productions
Tickets on Sale at http://sciencefictionproject.brownpapertickets.com
The Science Fiction Project is an ongoing series of short shadow theatre happenings that examine the concepts of community, environment, identity and human conditions, utilizing the conventions of Science Fiction. Created and directed by Ellen Sebastian Chang, Installment 1 + 2 is a one-night-only event that reveals a making of a modern creation myth, weaving personal and collective dreams and oral traditions in Africa. The story - what Chang coins as “Afrofuturist Myth Making” - unfolds against the backdrop of interplaying shadow and light choreographed by Larry Reed and improvised live soundscape of the genre defying music duo, Black Spirituals. Interdisciplinary musician/storyteller Amber McZeal takes the center stage as the Narrator/Navigator guiding you on a journey of how-we-all-got-here.
Project team also includes: Yoshinori Asai (sets), Winnie Chien, Dana Kawano (costumes), Caryl Kientz, I Made Moja, and Fred C. Riley III
The Science Fiction Project: Installment 1 + 2 is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and the San Francisco Arts Commission through an Organization Project Grant. This project is also sponsored in part by grants from Grants for the Arts/General Fund Portion of the San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund and The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
Artwork by Dana Kawano
About the Artists:
Ellen Sebastian Chang is a director, writer and the creative director for The World As It Could Be, using arts to teach the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Ms. Sebastian Chang was the cofounder and artistic director of LIFE ON THE WATER, a national and internationally known presenting and producing organization at San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center from 1986 through 1995. In 2015 she collaborated with Oakland/LA artist Maya Gurantz to create A Hole in Space (Oakland Redux) voted “Best Underground Public Art Project”. In 2013 she was the Consulting Producer for HBO’s Whoopi Goldberg Presents Moms Mabley. Her 1982 directorial and writing debut, Your Place Is No Longer With Us, was published in West Coast Plays and won a Bay Area Critics Circle Award for New Directions in Theater.
She has directed and collaborated with some of the best artist in the Bay and Beyond in opera, dance, theater, spoken word and performance art including Gamelan Sekar Jaya (Balinese Dance Drama Kawit Legong and Kali Yuga); Aya de Leon (Thieves in the Temple); Amara Tabor Smith’s Deep Waters Dance Theater (Our Daily Bread , He Moves Swiftly… and House/Full of Blackwomen); Oakland Opera Theater (Philip Glass’ Akhenaten); KITKA and Ukrainian composer Mariana Sadvoska (The Rusalka Cycle); Felonious and One Ring Zero (Stateless: a Hip-Hop Vaudeville). She is a 2016 recipient of the Creative Capital grant for her collaboration on House/Full Of Blackwomen with Amara Tabor-Smith, and is the Owner and General Manager of FuseBOX Restaurant in West Oakland.
Larry Reed is an internationally recognized theatre director and is one of the few American dalangs (“shadow master”) of traditional Balinese Wayang Kulit. The Founder/Artistic Director of ShadowLight Productions, Reed has pioneered contemporary shadow theater by integrating traditional shadow theatre techniques with film, modern theatre and dance styles. Truly a multidisciplinary artist, Reed has also written, directed and produced films in the US and Mexico. Shadow Master (1979) has been shown on PBS and Discovery Channel. Reed has garnered numerous awards and honors, and was named one of Top 50 artists in the SF Bay Area by Metropolitan Magazine in 1995 and 1996.
Amber McZeal is an artistic scholar whose passion for harmony and humanitarianism continues to lead her down the path of spiritual, political and scientific inquiry. Amber has recently received her Master’s degree in Depth Psychology with Somatic Specialization and will begin dissertation development in the Community psychology, Liberation psychology, and Ecological psychology specialization at Pacifica Graduate Institute in 2016. She resides in Oakland, CA.
Black Spirituals of Oakland CA, are a locally venerated duo of creative sound-makers (Zachary James Watkins and Marshall Trammell) who articulate meaning at the ecstatic intersection of tone-generating electronics & the heart-thumping, acoustic percussion technologies. Predicated upon their libidinal drive to produce the narrative of our musical expositions, Black Spirituals mediates a threefold vernacular presence, the instigation of unfurling cultural dynamics, and the relationship mediation collective logics: (1) Simultaneous soloistic vernacular development; (2) Emplotment of individual narratives in tandem; and, (3) Combined, multi-aesthetic approaches. Black Spirituals has released multiple albums, Of Deconstruction (Sige Records, 030), High Vibration Resonance Vol.1 (The Tapeworm), Group Three: Live at the Berkeley Art Museum featuring electronic musician and synthesizer maker Kaori Suzuki (Touch Radio #98), and Black Listening (Sixtyhurts). www.blackspirituals.com
ShadowLight Productions was founded in San Francisco in 1972 by Larry Reed to nurture indigenous shadow theatre traditions, expand the possibilities of the shadow theatre medium, and reflect the cultural diversity and complexity of the modern world through its works. It is one of the very few companies dedicated solely to the art of shadow theatre, and fills a distinctively unique role in the American Theatre scene. The company’s work has been presented internationally and the company has received Citations for Excellence from the International Puppetry Association and has been nominated for the American Theater Wing Design Award. www.shadowlight.org