MOSAIC
Producer, Lighting Designer
DIZZY SPELLZ, an interdisciplinary work conceived and created by Sean Jones and Brinae Ali, offers an Afro Futuristic look at the intersecting cultural and spiritual dilemmas within the African diaspora through the music of Dizzy Gillespie.
The work, currently in concert form, fuses elements of jazz, tap, Hip Hop, and Bebop to articulate the social vernacular language of the African American experience. Mr. Jones and Ms. Ali are partnering with me to add design and staging elements, in order to grow it into a more theatrical experience. The new iteration of the piece is currently scheduled for November 2024, and will presented alongside a companion Afro Futurist art exhibit in MOSAIC’s Gallery 51.
MOSAIC
Producer, Designer
Conceived & Written by Alex Lee Reed
Field Notes on Humanity is a collaborative, community-based, and intersectional social theatre experiment studying the experience of connection, ancestral roots, self-love, grief, and loss. The project began as a series of community dialogues and place-based research activities. The resulting script is undergoing a rewrite and workshop process, and is planned to be ready for production in 2025.
MOSAIC & MCLA Theatre
Producer, Director
Book & Lyrics by Rudy Ramirez
Music by Ammon Taylor
Designed by Michaela Petrovich
What does it take to be The Most Dangerous Woman in America? Emma Goldman knows. An activist and an organizer, a lover and a radical, Emma Goldman found anarchism as a teenager in the 1880s and lived her life by its ideals, fighting for freedom, beauty and equality against the forces of capitalism and the US government. Now, deported to the newly created Soviet Union, Emma is closer to the world she dreamed than ever before, but it will take all she's learned to keep it from turning into a nightmare.
Conceived and written by MOSAIC Benedetti Fellow, Rudy Ramirez, a workshop performance of Act 1 is scheduled for April 2024.
As part of its mission to serve as a bridge between arts experiences and the broader liberal arts curriculum, MOSAIC brings performing artists to the MCLA campus for workshop experiences in partnership with faculty and classes across the college.
Upcoming workshops include an exploration of musician Stephanie Chou’s opera about the forced prostitution of Korean women during World War II, Comfort Girl; and a screening of Second Seed, dance duo Baye and Asa’s film response to D.W. Grifith’s Birth of a Nation. As with all MOSAIC workshops, both experiences provide an opportunity for MCLA students to meet and learn directly from the artists themselves.
