Wanda's Picks Radio Show, May 31, 2019

Linda Steel II
photo: Jason Lam

This is a black arts and culture site. We will be exploring the African Diaspora via the writing, performance, both musical and theatrical (film and stage), as well as the visual arts of Africans in the Diaspora and those influenced by these aesthetic forms of expression. I am interested in the political and social ramifications of art on society, specifically movements supported by these artists and their forebearers. It is my claim that the artists are the true revolutionaries, their work honest and filled with raw unedited passion. They are our true heroes. Ashay!

1. East Bay Dances, hosted by Oakland Ballet Company, features among others, dancer, choreographer, Linda Steele II, who is a improvisational dance artist and creator, formally trained at Marin Ballet and Marin School of the Arts before receiving her BFA from Dominican University of CA where she also studied Art History. She has been honored to have performed original works by Alonzo King, Drew Jacoby, Maurya Kerr's tinypistol, Sidra Bell, Katie Faulkner and recently with Joslynn Mathis Reed, Urban Jazz Dance Company, Dazaun Soleyn, Kendra Kimbrough Dance Ensemble, .fLEE dances and Capacitor Dance, among others.

Linda Steele II has presented her solo work in various dance festivals and art events including the renowned Ebony Fashion Fair. She has studied and choreographed Dance for Film with MADE in France and has performed internationally with Anandha Ray's Quimera Tribe, Urban Jazz Dance Co, Corina Kinnear and others. She is deeply grateful to have met and collaborated with such amazing artists.

East Bay DANCES
Hosted by Oakland Ballet
Sunday June 2, 2019
4pm
Laney College
Odell  Johnson Theater
900 Fallon St. (across from Lake Merritt BART)

Tickets
$25 adults
$20 seniors
$15 children and students

2. Jackie Wright joins us to talk about the 21st Annual San Francisco Black Film Festival, June 12 (preview) to June 16, 2019 Visit https://sfbff.org/wordpress/official-selections-2019

3. Juneteenth 2019 in Oakland
Wanda Ravernell, Executive Director is the visionary of Omnira Institute and promoter and manager for Awon Ohun Omnira, (Voices of Freedom) and serves as the narrator for its performances. She has been the administrator and booking agent as well as the publicist for all of its activities.

  
A former journalist who worked for 20 years in the newspaper business at the Alameda Newspaper Group, the Sacramento Bee and The San Francisco Chronicle, she also was an activist for minority journalists including developing and implementing a workshop for minority high school journalists. From 2003 to the present, Ravernell developed and implemented a Juneteenth ritual commemorating the Emancipation Proclamation using that included all the faiths of the captives who would become slaves during the Slave Trade Era.

Beginning in 2009 to the present, Ravernell developed and implemented several lecture demonstrations drawing on the African traditional knowledge and applied it to African American history using a choir comprised members of an African American church and the Lucumi community, who also provided the musical framework and expertise of the sacred drum tradition known as Bata. The choir, Awon Ohun Omnira (Voices of Freedom) received the 2010 Negro Spirituals Heritage Award from the Friends of Negro Spirituals, a nonprofit dedicated to the preservation of the music.

In 2015, through Ravernell, the institute received a Certificate of Recognition from California State Assemblyman Nate Thurmond.  In 2014, Ravernell with Sauda Burch led the institute in developing and staging the first Black-Eyed Pea Festival, held in Oakland’s Mosswood Park. Concerned about the impact of the deaths of young, black men and women at the hands of the police, Ravernell, with Dennis Toabji Stewart, decided to bring healing through traditional music to the surviving families. They have worked with Cephus “Uncle Bobby” Johnson, the uncle of Oscar Grant who was killed by BART police in 2009 and Phelicia Jones with The Justice for Mario Woods campaign. Woods was killed by S.F. Police in 2015.  Visit omnirainstitute.org

Kathy Lynn "Kanika" Marshall
Michael Fitzwater Photography

   

4. Kanika Marshall, author, artist featured in the Sac Black Book Festival, May 31-June 1, 2019 https://www.kanikamarshall.com/mbr_bio.php

Kurt Edward Fishback chose Kanika Marshall
to be a part of his tribute to women artists.

Visit  http://tobtr.com/11358841

Wanda's Picks Radio Show, May 29, 2019

This is a black arts and culture site. We will be exploring the African Diaspora via the writing, performance, both musical and theatrical (film and stage), as well as the visual arts of Africans in the Diaspora and those influenced by these aesthetic forms of expression. I am interested in the political and social ramifications of art on society, specifically movements supported by these artists and their forebearers. It is my claim that the artists are the true revolutionaries, their work honest and filled with raw unedited passion. They are our true heroes. Ashay!

1. Alma Robinson, Executive Director of California Lawyers for the Arts










2. Cassidy Friedman and Eric Butler's "Circles" screening at SF Indie Doc Fest selection, Sat., May 1, 2:30 at the Roxie & Monday, June 3, 9 p.m. (Roxie), sfindie.com
https://www.circlesmovie.com/

3. Abdul Kenyatta, Speakeasy Storyteller Cafe  at

SFIAF, 9:00 p.m., Friday, May 31, 2019, and https://www.facebook.com/abdul.kenyatta

Wanda's Picks Radio Show, Friday, May 24, 2019

This is a black arts and culture site. We will be exploring the African Diaspora via the writing, performance, both musical and theatrical (film and stage), as well as the visual arts of Africans in the Diaspora and those influenced by these aesthetic forms of expression. I am interested in the political and social ramifications of art on society, specifically movements supported by these artists and their forebearers. It is my claim that the artists are the true revolutionaries, their work honest and filled with raw unedited passion. They are our true heroes. Ashay!

1. Chris Metzler, Associate Director of Programming, DocFest, 18th SF Doc Fest May 29-June 13, 2019 https://sfindie.com/

2. Mary Gallagher Stout
https://www.mgstout.com/about

https://www.machinaartfest.com/exhibitingartists

3. Faye Wilson Kennedy, Sacramento Black Book Festival, May 31-June 1
https://www.sacramentoblackbookfair.com/

Far, Far Better Things by Geetha Reddy, a co-production of TheatreFirst and Shogun Players through May 19 at Live Oak Park Theatre in Berkeley

A Review of TheatreFirst and Shotgun Players present a co-production of “Far, Far Better Things” by Geetha Reddy, directed by Katja Rivera

by Wanda Sabir

It is easy to become what you know, so easy. What’s difficult is resisting. Unresolved trauma just haunts the gene pool. A son (Josh, actor Yohana Ansari-Thomas) witnesses his mother’s murder or its aftermath—Dad’s bloody shirt and subsequent kidnapping of the children until he is captured. This same boy now man still has unresolved memories of that day when his mom was shot and the housekeeper “stood there and did nothing.” He is angry to find this same woman once again in their family home, this time taking care of his niece, his sister, Zoe, now a doctor’s daughter.  He becomes his father—he rapes the woman’s child, he then calls his friend who works for immigration and reports his former nanny.

Pilar (Michelle Navarrete) didn’t protect him. She ruined his life, so now he’s going to ruin hers and her child’s too. As he turns into his father, does Zoe turn into her mother? From the crypt we hear the voice of the activist in published videos. One wonders what she suffered to die so brutally. What was going on in her house?

The late Lali Putri  (Radhika Rao) was a human rights activist whose work centered on women’s rights. She founded a shelter for immigrant women who were fleeing spousal or partner abuse. The housekeeper/friend (Pilar) finds shelter there and support.  The two women make plans together to expand services. Pilar is going to go to law school. As the younger immigrant woman grows into her womanhood, she gains confidence, an attitude reflected later in her daughter’s personality.  Dani, actress Neiry Rojo, is no wimp. She is the kind of young woman who is not afraid to speak the truth. She gives her mother tools to confront these adults she used to take care of. Pilar’s daughter who is reading Charles Dickens Tale of Two Cities, critiques the author’s portrayal of women as appendices of men without agency or freewill. She says he intentionally crafts these weak mono-dimensional female characters despite Mary Wollstonecraft’s work which stands in opposition to British contemporary male writers whose work furthers patriarchal propaganda.

There is a beautiful moment when Pilar confronts her employer, Zoe (Kimiya Shokri). She demands compensation for all the times Zoe has come home late and then pays Pilar her salary late too. Fed up, Pilar tells Zoe she has been keeping track and shows her a quilt she has knitted – stories sewn into the cloth. The yellow flower is the gun she finds. When Pilar’s daughter is harmed, she picks up the gun as brother and sister watch her nervously as she paces and talks— weapon in her hands.  In Far Far Better Things, the abuse doesn’t stop until every woman on stage has experienced rape—and then the pain body takes on a life of its own as the three women (one a ghost) juggle single parenting with work.

The playwright says she started writing this play as an adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities during the summer of 2016.  However, at the same time, she writes in the program notes that she was also thinking about frogs in boiling water. “Far Far Better Things was written from inside that pot looking up at the lid closing over her head and thinks ‘Hey, what happened to the sun?’”

The two cities are multiple Americas. Both the doctor and her brother and their servant are immigrants. A Latina, Pilar just does not have citizenship papers. She says her parents rode the bus and walked across the border into America. She was two and her mother carried her most of the way. Zoe and Josh’s South Asian parents were not poor or uneducated. Legal immigrants, they have not had to worry about deportation. The economics of the situation make these two families seem different, yet they are so similar. Far Far Better shows what is better for one person is fairer if available to all persons.

Dickens was a class driven writer. He cared about the use of child labor in the factories. He took moral stands on economic inequalities and exploitation of the poor by the rich. Far Far Better tells a similar story of exploitation. Zoe is her mother Lali Putri’s daughter. Will she get it right too?

The acting in this tense play is superb. The way the three women, the dead mother and the two living ones parent is so different. Pilar at one point tells Zoe how her mother helped her figure out how to be a mother. Questions she would have asked her mother, she asked Lali Putri.  Pilar's experience is Lali Putri is not what Zoe remembers of her mother. Zoe seems angry when she thinks of her. Perhaps her mother gave away too much and had nothing left for her own children?

Pilar offers what she has learned with the new mother. Zoe is not interested. When the two women meet as adults the first time, Zoe lets her two week old child cry herself to sleep. In contrast it is sweet to see how affectionate Pilar is with Dani, who allows her mother to hug and kiss her, even lie in the bed with her close. 

This intimacy is also reflected in the set design-- a living room with a small kitchen, door to outside where we see Pilar and Dani's tinier space-- a chair. The baby grows bigger too. Light projected into the space when darkened between scenes adds a sci-fic ethereal look to the space especially when the disembodied fourth woman, whose portrait sits on the table near the door speaks. Her face is often too large for the room to hold.  Is the table near the door an altar?

Both Pilar and Zoe consult Radhika Rao's Lali Putri, especially when Dani shares online links. Is Rao live or is her Lali Putri really a projection? Her energy is omnipresent, her will omnipotent.  
This play closes the company's wonderful 2018-19 TheatreFirst Season which featured, if I am not mistaken, all new work. To learn more about what’s coming up next, visit theatrefirst.com

Wanda's Picks Radio Show, Friday, May 17, 2019 featuring CA Lawyers for the Arts & The SF International Arts Festival 2019

This is a black arts and culture site. We will be exploring the African Diaspora via the writing, performance, both musical and theatrical (film and stage), as well as the visual arts of Africans in the Diaspora and those influenced by these aesthetic forms of expression. I am interested in the political and social ramifications of art on society, specifically movements supported by these artists and their forebearers. It is my claim that the artists are the true revolutionaries, their work honest and filled with raw unedited passion. They are our true heroes. Ashay!

1. Jason Mendez, Supremacy @ EXIT on Eddy through 5/18


2. Alma Robinson, Executive Director of California Lawyers for the Arts, expanded the organization in 1987 into a statewide agency with staff in San Francisco, Berkeley, Sacramento, Los Angeles and San Diego. In 2011, she began CLA's successful Arts in Corrections Initiative in collaboration with the William James Association to restore funding for California’s arts programs in prisons, which had been defunded in 2003. With support from the Art for Justice Fund, Alma produced a series of six Art for Justice Forums with co-conveners in Michigan, Texas, Alabama, Georgia, California and New York in 2018 while concluding a three-year project funded by the NEA that is demonstrating the benefits of arts programs in county jails throughout California.  CLA's third conference on Arts in Corrections will be presented in June,2019 at Santa Clara University. A graduate of Middlebury College and Stanford Law School, Alma was a founding board member of California Arts Advocates and the Museum of the African Diaspora, and has served as a trustee for the San Francisco Opera Association, Mills College and the Urban School.

Shifts in Consciousness 

2. Andrew Woods, Executive Director, 
SF International Arts Festival 2019; 
Jasmine Milan Williams, SFIAF artist: Shifts in Consciousness's Us and the US (5/24, 7 PM; 5/26, 6:30 PM); Abdul Kenyatta, SFIAF artist (5/31, 9 PM), Speakeasy Storytellers Series 



Us in the US on Youtube

Show Link: http://tobtr.com/s/11337367

Wanda's Picks Radio Show, Wed., May 15, 2019

This is a black arts and culture site. We will be exploring the African Diaspora via the writing, performance, both musical and theatrical (film and stage), as well as the visual arts of Africans in the Diaspora and those influenced by these aesthetic forms of expression. I am interested in the political and social ramifications of art on society, specifically movements supported by these artists and their forebearers. It is my claim that the artists are the true revolutionaries, their work honest and filled with raw unedited passion. They are our true heroes. Ashay!?

1. Ahjamu Umi, joins us to talk about African Liberation Day 2019. He has been an organizer for the All African Peoples Revolutionary Party since 1984.  He has organized for the party on three continents and the Caribbean.  He has a Masters Degree in Econ/Political Science and he has authored/published four books including the recently released political thriller "The Paradox Principles."

2. We speak to Carol Leigh, founder and director and Jovelyn Richards re: Sex Workers Film Festival 20th Anniversary.  http://www.sexworkerfest.com/events.html

Jovelyn D. Richards is an international performance artist, writer, film and theater director and radio host for Pacifica radio KPFA 94.1

3. Rene Marie interview from June 29, 2011 (excerpt).

4. Nambi E. Kelly's "Jazz" at MTC through Wed.-Sunday, May 19. She and C. Kelly Wright (Violet/Country Violet) join us to talk about the work. 

To listen to the show: http://tobtr.com/s/11336141

Ruth Beckford

From "Alice Street," the film

When one thinks about Ms. Ruth Beckford (Dec. 7, 1925-May 8, 2019) she sees a queen. If Alvin Ailey is a King, then certainly Ms. Beckford is her Majesty. An Oakland native, she graduated from Oakland Tech, then UC Berkeley.  She was often the first or only Black girl or Black woman body on stage in company's like Anna Halprin Dance Company. Here is a link to the Ruth Beckford Papers.

Ms. Beckford studied with Katherine Dunham and based her instruction on the Dunham Method. She was also wrote many books about her life and several plays. She was certainly an artist's artist.

Ms. Beckford probably lived as long as she did because she used the beauty of art to show young kids in Oakland how to make their lives beautiful beyond their imaginations, certainly beyond the imagination of structural racist paradigms.

She used her black woman body to illustrate the practicality of the notion, Black is Beautiful. Dance was for "every body" literally, especially black children. When Ms. Beckford was hired by Oakland Parks and Rec. she used the arts as a tool to teach life skills, a philosophy her mentor Katherine Dunham also used in her work. Dance was not entertainment, it was a way of life.  As an activist, Ms. Beckford was instrumental in the first Black Panther Party Breakfast Program at St. Augustine Church. She spoke often of how she and her team got local businesses to donate food to the program which volunteers would pick up and then she and others would cook and serve the meals to the children and (I believe some parents). This was the start of the free school meals programs in California and the rest of the nation. Unfortunately, nutrition is no longer the guiding principle in this program.

When hired by Parks and Rec., Ms. Beckford Oakland became the first city in the nation to have performing arts for in its recreation centers. Among her students was Deborah Vaughn, co-founder of Dimensions Dance Theatre.

Whenever I went to see Dimension Dance Theatre, Ms. Beckford was there. I remember when she started a Friends of the African American Museum and Library. One of her first projects was to interview elder Oakland residents. There was a lovely film created from those interviews. She has a Ruth Beckford Museum Gallery at Geoffreys Inner Circle which is open by appointment. In the lovely tribute written by Brenda Jones, she says that she did not want an memorial. I would presume, Ms. Beckford wanted all her flowers to surround her while she could still smell them (smile).

Here is an interview with Ms. Beckford: https://archive.org/details/caolaam_000089

Museum of Performance and Design, Legacy Online Oral Tradition Library: Ruth Beckford

Wanda's Picks Radio Show Rebroadcast May 1, 2019 episode

This is a black arts and culture site. We will be exploring the African Diaspora via the writing, performance, both musical and theatrical (film and stage), as well as the visual arts of Africans in the Diaspora and those influenced by these aesthetic forms of expression. I am interested in the political and social ramifications of art on society, specifically movements supported by these artists and their forebearers. It is my claim that the artists are the true revolutionaries, their work honest and filled with raw unedited passion. They are our true heroes. Ashay!?
1. Aminah Elsters, Family Unity Project Program Coordinator for LSPC, and joins us to talk about "Ain't I a Mother Too?"  May 10, 2019, 6-8 p.m. at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center, 388 9th Street, Oakland. Register at this free event: https://www.prisonerswithchildren.org/2019/04/aint-i-a-mother-too/

2. Lindsey Krumbein, founder, executive director, Gritty City Rep Youth Theatre re: The Taming of the Shrew, May 16-25 at the Flight Deck, 1540 Broadway, Oakland. She is joined by Nijzah Waterman, a junior at Envision Academy - a charter school in Downtown Oakland.  This is her 4th show with GCRep - she has been performing with us for 2 years. She plays Lucentia in this production of Taming. https://www.grittycityrep.org/

3. Jason Mendez (Playwright) is a content creator, making his debut as a playwright with Supremacy, directed by Amanda Ortmayer at the EXIT Theatre, 156 Eddy St, SF, May 3 - May 18, 2018.
http://www.theexit.org/supremacy/

4. Lisa Geduldig joins us to talk about the Thursday, May 9th installation of Comedy at Ashkenaz-- a Mother’s Day Comedy Show featuring a line up of Bay Area comedians who are moms (including a mom to a newborn): Diane Amos, Karinda Dobbins, Emily van Dyke, and Brandi Brandes, with de facto Jewish mother, Lisa Geduldig, as the MC.  http://www.ashkenaz.com/eventcalendar/2019/5/9comedy-night-at-ashkenaz

While Ashkenaz is an all ages venue, the comedy shows are not recommended for kids under 16.

Show link: http://tobtr.com/s/11292785

Friday, May 3, 2019, Wanda's Picks Radio Show

This is a black arts and culture site. We will be exploring the African Diaspora via the writing, performance, both musical and theatrical (film and stage), as well as the visual arts of Africans in the Diaspora and those influenced by these aesthetic forms of expression. I am interested in the political and social ramifications of art on society, specifically movements supported by these artists and their forebearers. It is my claim that the artists are the true revolutionaries, their work honest and filled with raw unedited passion. They are our true heroes. Ashay!?

1. Aminah Elster re: "Ain't I A Mother Too: a mother without housing is a mother without her child," event, Friday, May 10, 2019 (Register for the free event: https://www.prisonerswithchildren.org/2019/04/aint-i-a-mother-too/)

Lorraine Bonner's Sons of Perpetrations

2. F213 Writers and Artists Part 1
Lorraine Bonner

3. Steven Anthony Jones in "How I Learned What I Learned" at Ubuntu Theatre Project through Sunday, May 5, 2019

Patricia Montgomery's Wedding Coat: The Story About Domestic Violence

Kristine Mays's modern day lynchings and hashtag memorials

4. F213 continued
Patricia Montgomery, artist, with writer, respondent, Khadijah O. Miller, Ph.D.


5. Kristine Mays's and Patricia Montgomery will be on the F213 exhibit artist's panel closing day, May 11: https://www.ncwca.org/f213-exhibition.html


Show link: http://tobtr.com/11292783

Wanda's Picks Radio Show, Wednesday, May 1, 2019

1. Aminah Elsters, Family Unity Project Program Coordinator for LSPC, and joins us to talk about "Ain't I a Mother Too?"  May 10, 2019, 6-8 p.m. at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center, 388 9th Street, Oakland. Register at this free event at eventbrite.

2. Lindsey Krumbein, founder, executive director, Gritty City Rep Youth Theatre re: The Taming of the Shrew, May 16-25 at the Flight Deck, 1540 Broadway, Oakland. She is joined by Nijzah Waterman, a junior at Envision Academy - a charter school in Downtown Oakland.  This is her 4th show with GCRep - she has been performing with us for 2 years. She plays Lucentia in this production of Taming.

Synopsis

Welcome to Manhattan. It's 2019 in the city that never sleeps. Baptista Minola is trying to marry off both his beautiful Nigerian-American daughters to wealthy suitors, and he doesn't care if they're men or women, as long as they're rich! Gritty City Rep ushers in spring with another rambunctious physical comedy by William Shakespeare.

The Taming of the Shrew brings the Bard's timeless battle of the sexes into the present, exploring issues of power and gender dynamics, and the ways in which words and wit might serve as women's most powerful weapons.

3. Jason Mendez (Playwright) is a content creator, making his debut as a writer with The Exit. Jason knows the power of voice, striving to challenge and complicate social narratives by making space for un- and -underrepresented experiences. His written works range from commissioned readings for the San Francisco Olympians Festival to the graphic novels and has previously worked with Netflix on the set of 13 Reasons Why. Jason holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in Playwriting from San Francisco State University.

Supremacy by Jason Mendez directed by Amanda Ortmayer, EXIT Theatre, 156 Eddy St, SF, May 3 - May 18, 2018

Connor, an adopted black youth, has lived his entire young life flying under the radar, adhering to the rules of “the talk.” When an officer involved shooting thrusts him into the crux of his city’s mounting racial & political animus, between opposing movements for power, he is set on a journey of mythic proportions to learn the truth of his heritage. A revelation that holds the key to the greatest superpower against man’s inhumanity to man.

4. Lisa Geduldig joins us to talk about the Thursday, May 9th installation of Comedy at Ashkenaz-- a Mother’s Day Comedy Show featuring a line up of Bay Area comedians who are moms (including a mom to a newborn): Diane Amos, Karinda Dobbins, Emily van Dyke, and Brandi Brandes, with de facto Jewish mother, Lisa Geduldig, as the MC.

Lisa Geduldig is a local comedian and comedy producer who’s the creator, producer, and MC of a variety of comedy shows including Kung Pao Kosher Comedy™ - Jewish comedy on Christmas in a Chinese Restaurant (which celebrates its 27th year in 2019) and Comedy Returns to El Rio! (in its 11th year). 

While Ashkenaz is an all ages venue, the comedy shows are not recommended for kids under 16.