Category: Feature


Curtis Crisler: Migration of a Latchkey Boy

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October 19, 2012

(PHOTO: William Bryant Rozier) Curtis Crisler

Curtis Crisler’s unnamed speaker is a griot of sorts. His distant kin, fleeing from Jim Crow and southern domestic terrorism, joins the 5 million African Americans who decide to roll out.

But they aren’t the first to do so. Others left before them during the first Great Migration (1910 to 1930), which swept two-thirds of 1.6 million Black folks traveling alone or in small family groups toward New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Indianapolis.

The griot’s people ran with the second wave of migrants who, between 1940 and 1970, swell the Black population of those eight cities, and, like the earlier travelers, they’re determined to hold the industrial 20th century to its promises of jobs and opportunities in the Northeast and Midwest. A large number of them also surge through West Coast cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Seattle, and Portland.

Crisler calls this movement one about “Urban Midwestern Sensibility.” The poet, author and educator captures his griot’s journey and bends that history with the 1982 hit “Mama Used to Say” as the theme song in his forthcoming chapbook Soundtrack to Latchkey Boy that Finishing Line Press will release in December. (Preorder your copy here.)

The 18-poem collection’s garnered early praise through blurbs from two rising stars on the national literary scene. “True to its title, Soundtrack to Latchkey Boy bristles with music: an album in verse of coming up hard and finding a path to light,” writes Mitchell L. H. Douglas, author of Cooling Board: A Long-Playing Poem. “Curtis Crisler is both poet and DJ, spinning a playlist of parental wisdom in the guise of the prose poem. These are survival songs. Tune in and be moved.”

Ross Gay, author of Bringing the Shovel Down and Against Which, is just as moved. “Curtis Crisler’s Soundtrack to Latchkey Boy is magic in the way it makes heartbreak music,” Gay writes. “With its halting syntax and precise, twisting diction, with its conjuring of these exact voices…. What I mean is that my heart is jumping around like a kangaroo on account of how beautiful this book. Like I said—heartbreaking, yes. But music, even more.”

Soundtrack’s also half of a new collection Crisler’s currently writing. His other books include a mixed-genre novel (Dreamist), a children’s book (Tough Boy Sonatas), his debut poetry collection (Pulling Scabs, a Pushcart-nominated collection), and his chapbook (Spill, which won the 2008 Keyhole Chapbook Award from Keyhole Press).

(PHOTO: Finishing Line Press)

Soundtrack, his second chapbook, resulted from a two-year process of him watching his poems mature. Prior to that, Junior’s song “Mama Used to Say” kept looping in Crisler’s head. “It was intense,” he says. “I couldn’t shake it.”

That’s when he knew Soundtrack should be a book of prose poems. “I wanted a cadence to the poems that trailed off from the song….into the things that my mother actually would say,” says Crisler, who’s currently an assistant professor of English at Indiana University Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW). “That was the epiphany for me. So I played with it as much as I could and let the process dictate the progress of the poems…I then went back and added and subtracted various ‘layerings’ to the poems.”

The outcome? “Prose poems that address a sporadic rhythm, and gives way to the reflection of a man’s life by using Junior’s song to connect to his mother, community, and past, all while seeing himself become a man in the process, as well as getting insight to the mother’s character,” Crisler says.

The titles in the table of contents’ first two sections reads like a list of “mother-isms” (“…fat meat’s greasy,” “…a hard head makes a soft. behind,” “…don’t eat nobody’s. chittlins,” “…boy, you ain’t gone worry me,” etc.).

Each of Soundtrack‘s three sections opens  with a song line from Junior’s “Mama Used to Say”. By italicizing his mom’s sayings, Crisler weaves maternal wisdom throughout the unnamed speaker’s coming-of-age tale. Take the poem “…you won’t understand what I’m telling you now, but one day you will:

…you won’t understand what i’m telling you now, but one day you will “move mountains. stomp mole hills. righteous glory born to. you from stellar backs. steel workers, postal workers, and soldiers garnered you titles in this. united states of e pluribus unum.” booker t. and dubois ain’t helping with these bills, and you eat a hell of a lot. listen now and hear me then. you need to learn to motivate. push the pulse, inspire. either matriculate or get job. but be more than one buck.

“Curtis’ work evolves from project to project, and now readers will get to experience this poet in a very intimate way,” says Randall Horton, author of Lingua Franca of Ninth Street and Definition of Place. He and Crisler met six years ago at Cave Canem’s week-long summer poetry retreat for writers of African descent. “Curtis showed me the ropes around the campus my first year there,” he says.

Horton’s admired his friend’s work since. “I’m always excited to see what Curtis is doing next,” says the poet and editor, who worked with Willow Books to publish Crisler’s Pulling Scabs and Dreamist. Though he hasn’t read Soundtrack, Horton’s optimistic about the book and speculates it will echo. “I’m referring to a literary heritage of perhaps [Robert] Hayden or [Gwendolyn] Brooks, maybe [Sterling] Plumpp or [Lucille]  Clifton,” he says. “I expect to be left with an experience.”

(PHOTO: William Bryant Rozier)

Junior’s song is an irony that hits Crisler close to home. While “Mama Used to Say” encouraged kids against rushing to get older, Crisler’s childhood forced him into adulthood when his single-mom took night classes to earn her high school diploma.

Latchkey kid is a term that goes back to World War II, when stay-at-home moms took up odd jobs to make ends meet while their husbands fought in the armed forces. The practice of leaving kids home alone in the daytime is now common for working parents who can’t afford childcare.

At 5 years old, Crisler was the little man of the house. “I could cook a basic breakfast,” the Gary, IN-native says. “I walked to school on my own and had a key to the house in my sock.”

And while most latchkey kids suffer from depression, low self-esteem and are easily influenced by peers, that experience made Crisler independent and self-reliant at a young age. “I had obligations…one was to be home to watch my younger sister,” he says.

(PHOTO: William Bryant Rozier)

His then-basic culinary skills enabled him to fix his sister a sandwich when she was hungry. He even tucked her in and waited for his mom’s return before going to bed. “I know my mother believed in me, but I’m sure she worried until she got home as well,” Crisler recalls. “You had to contribute in a responsible way so that the family could function.” He held down the house until his aunt moved in with them.

That self-reliance and his mom made him a better husband and father. “She made sure I knew how to cook, shop, wash clothes, take care of my sisters, take care of our house, and take care of myself,” he says. “She was a bit of a handyman with certain home projects. I learned from her how to attend to family since my father wasn’t there.”

His mom, who raised three kids and her two sisters, gave him something else. “I was able to see a lot of my artistic self through her,” Crisler says, recalling that his mom modeled, acted, and did visual art.

She inspired him to write his first poem in 4th grade. “My mother would support us in anything we did, but she wanted us to show her that we were committed to our endeavors,” Crisler says. “When she saw that, she would be our biggest advocate.”

Her life also taught him that hard work earned respect. Crisler’s fellowships from Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Cave Canem, Soul Mountain, and a guest residency at Hamline University are testaments to his mom’s wisdom.

His work interested Allison Joseph, poetry editor at Crab Orchard Review and director of the MFA Program at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. “Congrats on the new chapbook!!!” she writes on Crisler’s Facebook wall. “Looking forward to reading it.”

Joseph’s still impressed with his earlier work. “Curtis Crisler’s poems are experimental but welcoming, funky intellectual rides that invite all to share in his scintillating view of our world,” according to her blurb for Pulling Scabs. “It’s always a delight and a surprise to see where a Curtis Crisler poem goes, and there is always gut-bucket substance beneath this poet’s flash and dazzle.”

(PHOTO: William Bryant Rozier)

His hard work also earned him many awards including the Sterling Plumpp First Voices Poetry Award, an Indiana Arts Commission Grant, the Eric Hoffer Award, and a nomination for the Eliot Rosewater Award. A playwright adapted his poetry to theatrical productions in New York and Chicago, and he’s published in a variety of magazines, journals, and anthologies.

What drives Crisler once pushed William Stafford. In an interview with Chicago Review’s Peter Ellsworth, the late-poet said: “The voice I hear in my poems is my mother’s voice.” Those words ring true with the young poet. “That voice pushes me to be more than I am, or at least all that I can be,” says Crisler, who shows this in the poem “now mama’s words ricochet/boomerang my skull”:

now mama’s words ricochet/boomerang my skull. my bones. fatherhood. i’ve stepped into some soupy resistance. mama’s words are all on the soul of my blues. blue muddiness. i can’t define.

The motherly voice assures Crisler it’s OK for Soundtrack’s poems to surprise him. “I’m still learning from them,” he says. “I believe these poems have taken me to a place I wasn’t prepared to go.” He started with two poems. “I hadn’t planned on writing them.” But those poems insisted on making their way into the world.

That’s how Soundtrack sprouted from the germ of an idea. “Man, the creative process is crazy cool,” Crisler says. “It frustrates and burns and keeps you on your toes, but when it comes through, it comes through big time, if only from this latchkey boy’s perspective.”

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The Residency and Immersion

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July 8, 2012

(PHOTO: Courtesy) Jaed Coffin grew up in Maine and has worked as a boxer and lobsterman before becoming a writer and Stonecoast MFA faculty member.

Jaed Coffin’s goal is to aim for the big idea when he’s working on a writing project, often immersing himself in his subjects’ worlds. And he didn’t expect anything less from his students, who he urged yesterday to do their subjects’ stories justice by giving readers the big picture.

There was a lot to take away from Coffin’s presentation YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS SH*T UP!: An Introduction to Immersion/Literary/Longform Journalism. Yesterday was also the second day of the Stonecoast MFA summer residency, which started with a tour of the Stone House for first semester students by journalist and author Sam Smith, who spent his childhood summers living in the Casco Bay waterfront estate.

I came back this year as a fourth semester student, who for the last six months worked on my third semester project (a creative collaboration with a comic strip artist that produced a comic book) while starting a new job and promoting my debut poetry collection in addition to getting married.

And I’m still charged from Friday’s Flash Faculty Reading, where Dolen Perkins-Valdez, author of the novel WENCH, peeled our wigs back with a short story she hadn’t published yet. The award-winning writer, who’s also a former University of California postdoctoral fellow and graduate of Harvard, is guest faculty at this residency. I enjoyed talking to Perkins-Valdez about married life (she’s going on nine years) and appreciated her insights on parenting.

Just as priceless was my first day in the cross genre workshop Explorations in Masculinity, co-facilitated by David Anthony Durham and Jaed Coffin. What’s interesting is there are only two guys in this workshop of seven students. Yesterday, we started our workshop in a room at the Stone House, where we have all our workshops and presentations.

This grand estate is striking with its multiple stone porches and fireplaces. The beautiful stained glass, wood, and tile work are as breathtaking as the ocean view from each room. On the extensive grounds of the Stone House are rocky pathways to harbor vistas, nationally renowned heather gardens, and historically organic farmland.

I was glad that Durham and Coffin took the workshop to the deck behind the house, where our conversations flowed from different male archetypes presented in Twilight and Harry Potter, to the dominant-submissive theme in contemporary literature. We also talked about so-called traditional male types that over-populated action flicks. Coffin asked us if those guys even existed.

(PHOTO: Selectism) Gay Talese, author and pioneer of literary journalism.

That question about the truth was a great lead  up to Coffin’s presentation on literary journalism, or what he called narrative nonfiction. “To me, it’s the least pretentious term,” he said. It’s also a form of long journalism pioneered by writer Gay Talese, who wrote the most memorable profile of Frank Sinatra for Esquire more than four decades ago.

As the story goes, Talese came to  Los Angeles to profile Sinatra. “The legendary singer was approaching fifty, under the weather, out of sorts, and unwilling to be interviewed,” according to Esquire’s editorial note. “So Talese remained in L.A., hoping Sinatra might recover and reconsider, and he began talking to many of the people around Sinatra—his friends, his associates, his family, his countless hangers-on—and observing the man himself whenever he could.” This resulted in the 11,000-word article “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold” that Esquire published April 1966.

Coffin used the profile as a great example of  the three-part zoom functions used by literary journalists. At 1X (wide frame): the writer captures the subject’s environment, atmosphere, regionalism, culture, subculture, race, identity, and class. The writer zooms in to 2X (narrow focus), where they capture the subject’s home, community, family, past, genealogy, origins and lore. Then, at 3X (narrower focus), the writer zooms directly on the subject. At this focal point, the writer  captures the subject’s eyes, ears, speech, charms, patterns of behavior, clothing, and so on.

Talese does that throughout his profile of Sinatra. That long-form of journalism is defined by an Esquire editor as “a work of rigorously faithful fact enlivened with the kind of vivid storytelling that had previously been reserved for fiction.”

That struck a chord with Coffin, who at 18, knew he wanted to be a writer. At first, he tried his hand at fiction. “The first novel I tried to write [then] I got 25 pages into it and lost myself,” said the Stonecoast instructor, whose passion followed him from undergrad at New England’s Middlebury College through graduation, when he moved back home with his mom and took a job as a lobsterman while he worked on his writing. “I kept using reality as an amplified spring-board,” he said, to do the type of writing he wanted.

(PHOTO: Courtesy) A 21-year-old Jaed Coffin spent a summer in a Buddhist monastery.

Then the literary inertia pulled him to nonfiction when writing the truth became beneficial. “Most of the time truth is better than fiction,” Coffin said. “The social aspect of nonfiction is why I’m in the game. Nonfiction has this beautiful social element. You get to be out in the world.”

Coffin’s explorations took him from Brunswick, Maine, to his mother’s native village in Thailand, where he became a Buddhist monk after his junior year at Middlebury College.

He captured that experience in his memoir A Chant to Soothe Wild Elephants (Da Capo/Perseus), which is a tale of displacement, ethnic identity, and cultural belonging. According to the book jacket, it’s also a record of Coffin’s “time at the temple that rain season–receiving alms in the streets in saffron robes; bathing in the canals; learning to meditate in a mountaintop hut; and falling in love with Lek, a beautiful Thai woman who comes to represent the life he can have if he stays.”

The other benefits of writing nonfiction are just as alluring. “You make a lot of money and get to hang out with people,” Coffin said. “You also get to use every skill that fiction writers and poets use.” He’s currently working those skills in Roughhouse Friday (Riverhead/Penguin), his forthcoming book about the year he fought as the middleweight champion of a barroom boxing show in Juneau, Alaska.

Though he loves the adventure, Coffin advised it’s not a prerequisite to writing narrative nonfiction. “Do not feel like, because you have a domestic life, you cannot do literary journalism,” he said. “Reality, on its own terms, is strange and full of conflict. You just have to be patient enough to dig up the conflict.”

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2012 Awards Mark Best Year Ever for DC-based Nonprofit

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May 9, 2012

Full disclosure: I’m the senior program director for the D.C. Creative Writing Workshop. We’re always bragging about our students. They’re always doing amazing things. Here’s another post about what they’ve accomplished.

(PHOTO: DC Creative Writing Workshop) TyJuan Hogan (right) is hard at work on the after-school writing exercise. This year was a big one for the 7th grader who read before the mayor and had his poem recorded on NPR. He also won awards in three youth poetry contests.

TyJuan Hogan threw off the gloves when he stepped to the mic last Saturday. Earlier, while the other finalists read their poems aloud, the 7th grader went over his lines with the focus and determination of a shadow boxer going through fight routines, snapping his jabs and slamming his right hooks at the air.

In Hogan’s case, he punched with his words. “Paint first a house with graffiti./ The words will tell/ the city I lived in when I was first born,” he recited on May 5. Hogan’s lines from his poem “To Paint The Portrait of Home” tagged a roomful of fellow young poets and their parents at the 30th Parkmont Poetry Festival. He concluded: “This is home./… You will know it’s good if/ the rain doesn’t devour/ the color.”

The 7th grader was among the 13 writing club members who won the Parkmont. This unprecedented feat marked what the D.C. Creative Writing Workshop, an in-class and after-school program based at Charles Hart Middle School in Southeast, calls its “best year ever for awards.” In sum, Workshop participants won nearly one-third of the Parkmont prizes this year. Not only did Hart students dominate the Parkmont, they also left their mark at the 3rd Annual “Finding Gabriela” D.C. Poetry Contest Award, the Kids Post Poetry Contest, and the Larry Neal Writers’ Awards.

The Workshop’s Executive Director Nancy Schwalb was as ecstatic as she was two years ago, when Hart accomplished the same task of turning out more winners than any other school at the Parkmont Poetry Festival. “Year after year, our students win a disproportionate share of writing awards,” Schwalb said then. “It’s an amazing literary feat, especially considering the challenges that our students face in everyday life.”

For 12 years, the D.C. Creative Writing Workshop has used arts education to transform the lives of kids living in D.C.’s Congress Heights neighborhood, an often forgotten part of the city. According to recent data from the Social Justice Center at Georgetown University, Ward 8, which encompasses Congress Heights, has huge educational hurdles.

(PHOTO: Alan King) This year’s Parkmont Poetry Prize winners. (Top, l-r): Alpha Conteh, Ladeisha Meriweather, TyJuan Hogan, and Donte Harris. (Front row, l-r): Demarco Green, Daisha Wilson, and Shaniyah Lesane.

For starters, among 16-19 year-olds, the high school dropout rate was 16 percent, “substantially higher than the district average of 10.1 percent.” The center also found that “one third (34 percent) of Ward 8′s population over 25 did not have a high school diploma, which was about average for the District.” Additionally, 7 percent of residents don’t even have a 9th grade education, and the Median Annual Income is $32,348, according to recent statistics.

Since its start in 2000, the Workshop has expanded from its base of operation at Hart Middle School to two neighboring schools—Simon Elementary and Ballou Senior High—to accommodate increased demand attributed to the Workshop’s proof that arts education effectively helps youths overcome the educational hurdles.

Last month, TyJuan Hogan and Nia Adams shined despite the cold and rain at the 3rd Annual “Finding Gabriela” D.C. Poetry Contest award ceremony. The annual contest sponsors include the In Series, the Embassy of Chile, the Embassy of El Salvador, the Humanities Council of WDC, Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and the Gabriela Mistral Foundation. Adams received the award for first place in the age group category for 12 to 15 year-olds. Hogan won first place overall.

(PHOTO: DC Creative Writing Workshop) Workshop participants crafting their masterpieces.

Demarco Tucker was the lone Hart student who won the Kids Post Poetry Contest, sponsored by the Washington Post. “The skin on my body covers up my bones/… The grass on the ground covers up the dirt,” the 6th grader was quoted from his poem “Thin Ice.”

“The words people use cover up empty things/ people are scared to think/ The gift you buy is covering up the things you’ve done/ The moon covers up the stars.”

The night before the poetry festival, it was clear skies for the Hart stars at the Larry Neal Writers’ Awards. Sponsored by the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the honor recognizes the best writing by D.C. adults, youth, and teens in a handful of categories. Winners receive cash prizes at a formal ceremony at the Folger Shakespeare Library.

This year, D.C. Creative Writing Workshop students swept the Youth Poetry category: TyJuan Hogan placed first, Muhammad Ali got second, and LaShanda Jones was third. The Workshop’s Program Manager, Abbey Chung, won first place in the Adult category for fiction.

That momentum continued at this year’s Parkmont Poetry Contest, which is a citywide competition that designates 20 winners in the lower school division (6th through 8th grades) and 20 in the upper school division (9th through 12th grades). The Parkmont attracts contestants from some of the city’s most élite schools, this year including The Kirov Academy of Ballet, St. Patrick’s Episcopal Day School, Benjamin Banneker Academic High School, Duke Ellington School of the Arts, and the British School of Washington.

But those élite names didn’t stop Shaniyah Lesane from taking the mic. “When I’m loud I get wild/ like a wildfire going everywhere,” the 6th grader recited from her poem “My Loudness.” Nor did it deter Demarco Green, whose “Symbols of Personality” summed up the pride of the Workshop students. The 8th grader recited, “I’m a lyrical genius, got lyrics for days.”

These are all 13 of the D.C. Creative Writing Workshop’s Parkmont Poetry Contest winners:
From Hart Middle School: Alpha Conteh, Zena Craig, Kuela’H Simms, Demarco Green, Asia Chaney, Mitchel Tolar, Hailey Lewis, Daisha Wilson, Shaniyah Lesane, Ladeisha Meriweather, TyJuan Hogan, and Donte Harris.
From McKinley High School: Zinquarn Wright

Want to stay updated on what’s happening at the DC Creative Writing Workshop? Visit their Facebook page here.

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How Linette Got Her Scream Back

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December 20, 2010

 

(PHOTO: Courtesy) Linette Marie Allen is a 10-year marketing professional.

Linette Marie Allen heard it first 20 years ago.

A freshman Business major in her first semester then at Howard University, she wasn’t aware yet of what she would later call her “inner scream.” The introduction came on the fall of 1990 in the basement of the university’s Blackburn Center.

That night, she was preoccupied with her thoughts in the “Punch Out,” a campus cafeteria that doubled as a lounge for open mic events.

That night, the place was packed. She’d memorized her own poem for the occasion. The lights were dimmed for effect. Halfway through her piece, Allen drew a blank, forgetting her lines.

That’s when she heard her inner scream. Whatever you do be a voice of encouragement to others, it told her. Use your gifts and talents to uplift others. She had no way of knowing then that her business ventures would make her a resource for the unemployed or those switching careers.

“I wanted to be a launching pad,” Allen, 38, recalled in a recent phone interview.  “I really wanted to get behind and inspire people.” Those gifts and talents would have her coaching clients to develop action plans for starting a new business or making adjustments in their personal lives. Those gifts and talents would eventually lead her to write a book inspiring others to tap into their inner scream.

But that night in the “Punch Out,” Allen looked into the crowd, reassured to see her friend and fellow student Yao Hoke Glover. “It was a charged time,” said Glover, a Bowie State University professor. He met Allen through a comparative black literature course that same year.

(PHOTO: Meetup.com)

Though he can barely recall the details of that night 20 years ago, he said of that time, “It was a different type of poetry environment [then]. It was a whole activism bent that was connected to poetry.” Knowing her poem by heart that night, Glover mouthed the words of the next line to Allen. She got back on track and finished her performance. The crowd cheered.

The inner scream hasn’t left her alone since. In fact, that night was just the start of a journey that would later whisk her away from a good-paying job she landed after graduation. It pulled the native-Washingtonian from her hometown to grad school in the United Kingdom, and eventually to briefly live with her husband and teaching in Italy.

Perhaps that inner scream was the product of her birth to teenage parents in 1972 at DC General Hospital, the city’s first and only public hospital that operated for 200 years until it closed in May 2001 (the hospital was recently converted to a homeless shelter).

With a 15-year-old mom and 17-year-old dad, Allen’s grandparents, who had four children, helped raise her in their home. “My mother, in many ways, was like my older sister, although I addressed her properly,” Allen said, adding that her mother — who had Allen reading by age three — has been a motivator from the beginning.

The neighborhood’s boundaries included Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue SE, Fendall Street SE, and Maple View Place SE. The boundaries also ran along the eastern and southern sides of the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site to High Street SE.

Located east of the Anacostia River, according to various sources, the neighborhood remains a famous one in the Southeast quadrant of the city. Anacostia’s history goes back as far as the Nacochtank Native Americans who settled along the Anacostia River before Captain John Smith explored the area in 1608.

(PHOTO: Stock Image) A map of Anacostia and its boundaries.

The name, Anacostia, means “trading village,” according to sources. The Nacochtank villages at the river’s south side were busy trading sites for Native Americans in the region. War with and diseases from European explorers nearly wiped out the tribe, which ceased to exist as “a functional unit” during the last 25 years of the 17th century.

The first wave of European settlers came to the area in 1662. By 1791, the neighborhood became a part of DC. Allen’s grandparents bought their two-story brick home for $11,000 just after the Great Depression of 1929. Her grandparents were pioneers in a sense, moving into an area where Whites once comprised 87 percent of the population until the 1950s.

With public housing apartment complexes springing up throughout the neighborhood, and then the flight of middle class residents to suburbs, Anacostia’s demographics shifted to a predominantly Black neighborhood (the 2000 census showed African Americans made up 92 percent of residents).

(PHOTO: anacostianews.blogspot)

With the impact of deteriorated infrastructures and the drug trade, Anacostia’s crime rate peaked, according to sources, in the 1990s. But Allen has a different take on growing up during that era.

She grew up in “a little row house” in the 1300 block of Talbert Terrace SE, where her grandmother still lives to this day. “Growing up in Anacostia was actually the opposite of what the stereotypes might imply,” said Allen, who now lives in Gaithersburg, Md.

All the neighbors knew one another. She went to Savoy Elementary School on Shannon Place SE and Jefferson Junior High School on 7th Street SW. “It was probably insular in the sense that the neighborhood had a one-way street,” said Allen, who won the DC Miss Teen Beauty Pageant while a student in the Humanities program at Ballou High School in 1987.

She took on bohemian ways, hanging with DC’s poets, artists and musicians during her time at Howard. “She seemed to march to the beat of her own drum,” said Brian Gilmore, a clinical associate professor and director of the Housing Clinic at Michigan State University College of Law. Also a poet and writer, he met Allen through Glover in the DC arts scene around 1992.

He recalled reading an article by Eleanor W. Traylor, who at the time was professor of English and chair of the department of English at Howard University. In the article, Dr. Traylor cited Allen as a new emerging poet to watch out for.

(PHOTO: thedctraveler.com)

“When I saw Linette and mentioned it, she was just so very humble about it, like she felt honored to even be mentioned,” Gilmore recalled, adding that he was impressed by Allen’s humility. “A lot of that is missing today because poetry, and poets, are a bit self-indulgent, and self promotional to an extreme almost.”

He added that as a result, “The work, the tradition, gets lost, but Linette back then… understood the tradition.”

Everything in her life up to that point might have been orchestrated by her inner scream before Allen knew what it was, before it introduced itself to her that night in the “Punch Out.” That same year she met Gilmore, Allen transferred to the University of the District of Columbia (UDC), where she got free tuition since her mother was an employee there. She landed a job at the former Pricewaterhouse (now Pricewaterhouse Coopers), after graduating from UDC in 1996.

With skills as an analytical thinker and dubbing herself “spreadsheet queen,” Allen’s inner scream told her the skies were the limit. At the career coaching firm, she worked in the managing consultant division. “It was a good job,” she said. But not where she would stay long.

A special encounter on a metro bus during her Howard days had set off a series of events that eventually had her studying organizational and social psychology at the London School of Economics (LSE). To hear Allen tell it, it started with a pair of shoes. She noticed them while riding the 70 bus on her way to Silver Spring after her classes.

(PHOTO: Stock Image)

The unusual pair of heels were thick, high-stacked and with “European”-styled buckles. They were unlike anything Allen, who thought they were cool, had seen before. They were worn by Lara Oyedele, who Allen thought was an eclectic-looking African woman. Oyedele sat at the back of the bus, looking out the window.

Prior to their conversation, Allen couldn’t have known the woman was Nigerian, that she spoke with a British accent, and that she was an exchange student from Bradford England studying Radio-TV-Broadcast at Howard University. “I happened to glance over and look at her shoes,” Allen recalled. The two became “fast and hard” friends who went everywhere together.

While at Pricewaterhouse, Allen remembered Oyedele had invited her to fly out for a week in London.  She made the trip in 1996, taking in the sights and meeting Oyedele’s grad school professors at LSE. Allen talked with one professor for an hour. “I talked about my background and my interests,” she said. “This one professor just poured into me.”

When she got back, she had a number of decisions to make. Initially, George Washington University was her first choice for grad school. But after an unpleasant encounter with a GW admissions counselor, Allen applied to LSE and the University of Edinburgh in Scotland—and got into both.

(PHOTO: Guardian News) London School of Economics

Then there was her job. “They had offered me another position,” she said. If she took the job, it meant she wouldn’t be able to do grad school the following year. Her inner scream told her to take a risk, and so she did by turning down the job and going to LSE.

That decision didn’t surprise Gilmore. “She is outgoing,” he recalled, “a bit of a chance taker in a lot of ways.” It’s a decision she doesn’t regret to this day. “When I arrived, I absolutely loved the city,” Allen said. “London was a good fit for me.” There, she found a similar bohemian scene she had back home.

Then there were the free lecture series, where she recalled catching a lecture at LSE by  former South African President Nelson Mandela, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993. “You had Pulitzer Prize winners and authors who had published work,” she recalled. “The culture was so rich.”

The diversity in the classrooms was just as rich. “I had students in my program who were from all over the world”—from places like Sweden, Italy, Scotland and South Africa, said Allen, who was one of three Black students. As the only African American there, she made an observation about the classroom dynamic.

(PHOTO: Stock Image) Long established as an entertainment district, according to sources, for much of the 20th century Soho was popular among those of the night life and film industry.

“They [her fellow grad students] would speak open with me about what they thought about Americans and America, in general,” she said. “European men and women didn’t treat me like I was an African American. They actually treated me as if I was just an American.”

Glover noted the significance of Allen’s experiences. “She’s well traveled. That’s what I admire about her,” he said. “She’s my hero in the sense of getting out of the city and seeing how big the world is.”

Back in America, Allen was aware that race was thoroughly woven into the social fabric. Unlike Europe, she noted, America seemed to be hung up on labels. For instance, if a Black person won an award or did something spectacular, according to Allen, that person would be celebrated in America as an African American receiving an award.

But in Europe, it was different. “If I won an award, I was the American student,” she said.

Things were also different overseas on the dating tip. “I found that European men approached me just as boldly and as regularly as Black guys [back in the U.S.],” she said. “It was a little shocking to my fabric.” She met her husband, a native Italian, while studying in London.

They married in 1999 and divorced in 2007. During the marriage, she moved to Italy where her husband was finishing the doctoral program in Linguistics. They lived there for two years, when she learned the language at the University of Perugia in Perugia, Italy. She then landed a job at the University of Macerata in Macerata, Italy, teaching business communication to undergraduates.

(PHOTO: Courtesy) On Jan. 15, the e-book version will be available for the Kindle.

Allen, a mother of three, described her marriage as “a desert period,” where her inner scream was dried to the point of her almost losing her passions. “I stopped writing for a period of eight years. I wasn’t driven really to fulfill the work that I was called to do,” she said. “By the time I finally climbed out of the pit I was in, I didn’t even recognize myself.”

She continued, “It was a process of coming back and being true to that original inner scream…[that] says to me, today, louder than ever, ‘you are a writer.’”

She got back her inner scream two years ago, when she started writing her book, Operating in the Dream Zone: How to Kick Your Dreams to the Sky and Thrive in Any Economy. It’s a book, according to the front flap, about dusting off the imagination and “counting yourself in and counting your excuses out.”

Glover saw Allen’s strength when she counted herself in and her excuses out. “She’s an interesting character,” he said. “She’s always got a lot on her plate.”

She got back her inner scream by starting two businesses. In 2006, a year before her divorce, she started The Resume Ring, a small business that specializes in transforming resumes into effective marketing tools.

“I wanted to do something that would allow me to express my gift of writing,” said Allen, recalling her inner scream advising her 20 years ago to uplift and inspire. “Because I have a business background, I wanted something where I could act as a coach.”

And when The Resume Ring became too small for her vision, she started DreamZu in 2010. With her personal development consultancy firm, Allen does a number of things that include her walking clients through a step by step process of discovering their strengths, weaknesses, talents, skills, interests, and personality type.

(PHOTO: Courtesy) Author and businesswoman, Linette Marie Allen said, “There is no word greater than possibility.”

In addition to helping identify obstacles and determine ways to overcome them, she helps her clients as a resource to additional information and resources.

And for those still unsure about their inner scream?

“I would recommend they take inventory,” Allen said. “There are a couple of tools you can use.” They’re located in a section of her book called the “Dream Shop,” a map that will take readers through various stages of accessing what they see as limitations.

Don’t underestimate the mind, Allen will tell anyone. “Whatever it is, you can actually imagine your way out of a circle of impossibility.”

To keep up with Linette Marie Allen, visit her at DreamZu.

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Zine Gives Black Filmmakers A Platform

Filed under: Article, Feature — 3 Comments
April 8, 2010

(PHOTO: NeoBlack Cinema) Crystyn C. Wright is an educator, entrepreneur and journalist.

As a self-described “movie buff,” Crystyn C. Wright loves films, especially those reflecting the lives of African Americans. At one time, the Bronx-native, going by mainstream’s offerings, settled on the assumption that not enough black filmmakers were producing those films.

That assumption was corrected after she traveled to various film festivals. But Wright, a journalist active in various genres of the arts, figured if someone as film savvy as her initially had a hard time finding good black films, it showed her what the media thinks of independent black filmmakers.

So she decided to do something about it and teamed up with Abdul Ali, a NY-native-turned-D.C. resident, to found NeoBlack Cinema, an online independent film magazine for people of color. With a Mt.Vernon, NY-based operation and a staff of more than 35 writers nationwide, the magazine highlights films and the people, production and politics involved in the filmmaking process. “We like to call it a one-stop shop,” the editor and CEO said Wednesday in a conference call with Ali.

This one-stop shop also features a section for books, equipment, financing, reviews and commentary. “It’s very useful to have a publication tackling the many facets of the independent film world for filmmakers of color,” said filmmaker/poet Nijla Mu’min, founder of Sweet Potato Pie Productions.

Perusing the website, one can read profiles on established and up-and-coming filmmakers. “There are so many black filmmakers and filmmakers of color who are doing amazing, provocative, bold films today,” Mu’min said. “It also brings further unification between artists, and serves as a foundation for dialogue, publicity, and progress.”

The online voting, expert advice, film festival coverage and articles on the challenges faced by black filmmakers are all ways NeoBlack Cinema tries to engage and connect African Americans with independent black film communities around the country.

(PHOTO: Courtesy) Abdul Ali

“The idea that there would be a new venue for a new generation to write about independent black film is very exciting to me,” said Esther Iverem, founder and editor of Seeingblack.com. A former staff writer for The Washington Post, New York Newsday and The New York Times, Iverem has written about black film online for 10 years.

During that time, she’s covered both mainstream studio and independent black films, which has taken her to the Urban World Film Festival and the American Black Film Festival. At some of those events, “I saw films that I never actually saw released to the general public in a large-scale way,” said Iverem, who’s also a contributing critic for Tom Joyner’s BlackAmericaWeb.com. “I really understand the need to concentrate on those films…If NeoBlack Cinema can do that, that’s great.”

The idea, which started as what Wright calls “a seed,” germinated through a discussion she had with Ali more than a year ago. “This idea that there needs to be someone to help usher in a radical shift in the images of black people in film…was the sort of cooling board in all of this,” said Ali, the managing editor. “The mission came out of the hours of conversation…about what’s wrong with black films, what’s right with it, what we would like to see more of.”

According to Ali, one black movie that got it right was Love Jones. Written and directed by Theodore Witcher, the 1997 romantic film, which stars Larenz Tate and Nia Long, is set in Chicago.

Darius Lovehall (Tate), an aspiring writer and poet, meets Nina Mosley (Long), a gifted and aspiring photographer, before he gets on the open mic to perform a poem at the Sanctuary, an upscale night club presenting jazz and poetry. The film explores the ups and downs of Hall’s relationship with Mosley. It’s also loosely based on the life of poet Regie Gibson, who wrote the poem “Brother to the Night” that Tate performed in the movie.

(PHOTO: New Line Cinema)

In his article for The Root, Ali makes the claim there hasn’t been a film since that captures black romance like Love Jones. “So much is right with this movie. The chemistry of Nia Long and Larenz Tate is remarkable,” Ali writes. “The characters hang out in smoky spots where men and women dress up and wear nice clothes. Not one gun in the entire film.”

Ali adds, “And when was the last time you saw a black film where the main characters quote George Bernard Shaw, invoke Gordon Parks, and play Charlie Parker?”

With Ali on-board, the seed was planted. And since that discussion more than a year ago, as Wright puts it, “NeoBlack Cinema has been watered, nurtured and protected, and it has finally sprouted from the earth.”

(PHOTO: Courtesy) Phyllis Stickney.

The inaugural issue sprouted on March 2010 just in time for Women’s History Month. “Getting it together it really worked out well,” Wright says. “When we were looking at the line up, we were trying to get powerful strong black women who left lasting impressions on people to highlight.”

Among them was Phyllis Yvonne Stickney, whose list of movie appearances includes “Jungle Fever,” “The Inkwell,” and “How Stella Got Her Groove Back.”

Perhaps Stickney is best known for her career as a stand-up comic. She was among the first comedians of color to perform at the Juste Pour Rire Comedy Festival in Montreal, Canada. She’s also performed her stand-up at the Apollo Theater, and is a motivational speaker and published author and poet.

In addition to being an accomplished stage performer, Stickney is the founder/executive director for a non-profit community-based organization for the arts. “She has a really strong background and she was the essence of someone who I would like to uplift for women’s history month,” Wright says.

Another woman highlighted in the current issue is Emmy Award-winning writer, director and producer Neema Barnette. She made history by becoming the first African-American woman to direct a sitcom with “What’s Happening Now” in 1986.

(PHOTO: Courtesy) Neema Barnette

Among the list of television series she oversaw included “The Cosby Show”, “Hooperman”, “China Beach”, “A Different World”, “Diagnosis Murder” and “Seventh Heaven.” Barnette has also directed eight motion pictures for television and two feature films, “Spirit Lost” and “Civil Brand” starring Mos Def, LisaRaye, N’Bushe Wright, and Monica Calhoun and Da Brat.

Under her company Harlem Lite Productions, Barnette was the first African-American woman to receive a three picture deal at Columbia/Sony Pictures where she developed four screenplays, two television pilots and a television series.

She currently sits on NeoBlack Cinema’s Board of Advisors with Audrey Peterson, editor-in-chief of American Legacy Magazine, and Mark Anthony Neal, Ph. D, professor of African and African American Studies at University.

“There are several…images that people want to promote in black media, and we’re serious about making that better,” Wright says.

(PHOTO: agatepublishing.com) Ishmael Reed, a prominent African-American literary figure, has been described as "one of the most original and controversial figures in the field of African American letters"

Her comment comes amid the recent backlash of “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire.” In a Feb. 4, 2010 New York Times column, poet-essayist-novelist Ishmael Reed stated his beef with the movie. According to the mail he received, the conversations he had and the comments he read about the film, Reed noted he wasn’t alone.

“Among black men and women, there is widespread revulsion and anger over the Oscar-nominated film about an illiterate, obese black teenager who has two children by her father,” he writes.

The author Jill Nelson was quoted in Reed’s column as stating: “I don’t eat at the table of self-hatred, inferiority or victimization. I haven’t bought into notions of rampant black pathology or embraced the overwrought, dishonest and black-people-hating pseudo-analysis too often passing as post-racial cold hard truths.”

Reed added, “One black radio broadcaster said that he felt under psychological assault for two hours. So did I.”

(PHOTO: Courtesy) Irene Monroe is a religion columnist, public theologian, and motivational speaker.

Rev. Irene Monroe also fired away in a March 17, 2010, column for the Windy City Times, a Chicago-based gay media outlet. “The historical legacy of the devaluation and demonization of Black motherhood was both applauded and rewarded at this year’s Oscars,” writes Monroe. “And the point was clearly illustrated with Mo’Nique, capturing the gold statue for best supporting actress in the movie Precious based on the novel Push by Sapphire as a ghetto-welfare mom who demeans and demoralizes her child every chance she can.”

While NeoBlack Cinema’s Women’s History Month issue might appease Reed and Monroe, Wright and Ali have a different mission: to expand the territory of what’s considered black films. “It’s not really a matter of saying we want good films or happy films, it’s saying we want to get the full picture of who we are as people,” she said. “We want to see everything about what we’re doing for better or worse.”

This balancing act will require NeoBlack Cinema to educate, entertain, exchange, experiment, enlighten and evolve movie viewers. It’s a full-time endeavor for Wright, who currently funds the operation out-of-pocket. “Hopefully” — in the future — “we’ll have grants and donors and will be able to fund staff,” Wright said. Meanwhile, it’s a labor of love for her staff.

(PHOTO: Sutikare) Esther Iverem, veteran journalist

Iverem, the veteran journalist, noted that the operation can’t stay a labor of love for too long. Her advice to Wright and Ali is to develop a working model immediately to secure funds and keep the site updated. “Those things can be very difficult, but if you have a commitment to whatever you’re doing it’s important to try,” she said. “Otherwise, I could see how you can start off strong but after awhile everyone is going to get burned out.”

As for Ali, he’s charged up and ready to carry out the mission of NeoBlack Cinema. He said, “The real beauty of this project is that it’s so necessary that it needed to happen.”

All inquiries about NeoBlack Cinema can be directed to Crystyn C. Wright via email at editor@neoblackcinema.com, or by phone at 850-570-0197.

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Kobie Nichols: The Wind Rider

Filed under: Article, Feature — 2 Comments
January 11, 2010

(PHOTO: Eric Hudson) Kobie Nichols and his wife, Tyechia Thompson-Nichols

He’s organized film festivals, facilitated panels, got a novel-in-progress and recently staged a live reading of his screenplay while procuring a traveling art show. The 36-year-old’s also a sailor, and has done all those things outside of his day job.

But whether grinding at his nine-to-five or promoting his production company, Kobie Nichols will tell you he’s never off the clock.

In fact, the Richmond, Va.-native has been on the clock since he left his hometown for D.C. more than 10 years ago, after receiving a phone call from Eric Hudson, a childhood friend who had already relocated to the nation’s capital.

Nichols recalled Hudson’s question, “Yo, what you doing?” At the time, Nichols was a year out of school, having graduated with a degree in Industrial Engineering from North Carolina A&T State University in 1998. He was back in Richmond, working as a graphic designer for a pharmaceutical company. His contract would be up soon. Then afterwards? “Nothing,” Nichols told Hudson, who replied: “Yo, why don’t you move to D.C.”

It sounded like a good idea. Nichols would be closer to his then-3-year-old daughter, who lived with her mother in Maryland. And wasn’t D.C. where he ultimately wanted to live? he wondered. Hadn’t the city stolen his heart those undergrad years, when he watched Chocolate City’s finest strolling A&T’s campus? “We had a lot of Maryland and D.C. girls,” Nichols said, “and all of them were my favorite girls on campus.” So much so that Nichols and his friends had a Fab 5 list of “Maryland Chicks,” similar to Michigan’s Fab 5 list of top college basketball players. With his mind made up, Nichols told Hudson, “Cool!”

(PHOTO: Jefry Wright)

He was 26, when he came to D.C. in 1999. Three years later, he would be on a metro bus going to and from work, when he would pen the first draft of a screenplay about sex in D.C., a story loosely based on his experiences since his arrival. “I went to Bar Nun”—the lounge later called PUR—“a lot,” Nichols recalled. “There were just so many beautiful women around.”

That script, which he wrote the entire first draft of on legal pads, won’t have a title until its second draft. That title will come from Nichols browsing his bookcase and spotting Shel Silverstein’s “The Missing Piece Meets the Big O,” which would influence future versions of the script “Merser Piece Meets O.”

Screenwriting is a passion that goes back to Nichols’s childhood. With his mom working to make ends meet and his father living out-of-state, “TV and movies were my primary baby sitters,” Nichols said. “We always had cable, so HBO and Cinemax were my uncles.” But it wasn’t enough to just be passionate; he also had to learn the industry. In the process of creating an outline for his script in 2002, Nichols enrolled in a workshop at DCTV, a public access television station dedicated to building communities through telecommunications.

(PHOTO: Eric Hudson)

(PHOTO: Eric Hudson)

Since 1988, the member-based non-profit has allowed D.C. residents the opportunity to create and telecast their own shows for the local communities on cable television. That’s where Nichols learned TV production, which encompassed scriptwriting and technical skills such as stage lighting and operating a TV control room.

That’s where Nichols found a support group. “A place where I can talk to folks who were interested in the same things I’m doing,” Nichols said. That’s where he got an opportunity to produce a monthly TV show called Hot Topic with Marcus Jones and Krushea Starnes. DCTV also contracted Nichols to do sound for shows like More Room on the Outside, Most TV and YAP TV, where he’s script supervisor.

That collaborative approach is what Kimberly C. Gaines, Nichols’s friend of more than nine years, appreciated when they collaborated a year ago with Hari Jones on the traveling exhibition for the African-American Civil War Museum.

Jones, the curator, compiled the exhibit’s text from his lectures, the  first-hand accounts from military letters, Harper’s weekly, and information from the National Archives, according to a January 2009 post  on Gaines’s blog “Sondai: Tale of a Visual Goddess.” Nichols researched the images and assisted with the layout. “He’s quite the thinker,” she said. “He challenges those around him to do the same.”

(PHOTO: Eric Hudson)

(PHOTO: Eric Hudson)

When he enrolled at DCTV in 2002, Nichols founded Fresh Produce Entertainment Group (FPEG), a production company focused on providing “intimate views of urban life” through film, stage, and print media. Not long after, Nichols teamed up with Ayo Okunseinde, co-owner of Dissident Display Gallery in D.C.’s H Street corridor, and began a series of film festivals around D.C. called Fresh Produce Film Festival.

The first one took place in 2003. He and Okunseinde served wine, showed their films and opened the floor for comments and suggestions. Three more events followed at venues around the city including the former Blue Room (now Bourbon) in Adams Morgan. Submissions came from filmmakers in the city, around the country and overseas.  “It grew,” Nichols said. “We showed 12 films.” The last film festival was held at the Visions Bar Noir, an independent movie theater at the crossroads of the city’s Dupont Circle, Kalorama and Adams Morgan neighborhoods.

The theater, a redesign of the old Embassy Theater on Florida Avenue, opened its doors in May 2000. At the time, “We entered a marketplace when there wasn’t anything going on,” Visions president Andrew Frank told the Washington Post in a 2004 article. “We filled that specialty niche and revived it for a while at a time when the city was under-screened.”

(PHOTO: Courtesy of the42bus.blogspot.com)

(PHOTO: Courtesy of the42bus.blogspot.com)

But in 2002, the two-screen theater faced competition from newer, better-funded theaters that caught on and entered the niche marketplace of independent and art house movies, the Post reported. Among them were Landmark Theatres’ multi-screen Bethesda Row and E Street Cinema, Regal Theaters in Rockville, Loews Cineplex Georgetown, the American Film Institute Silver Theatre and the Avalon. The number of screens within a six-mile radius of Visions jumped from 89, in 2002, to more than 130.

Add to that the mounting debt, and the theater’s owners knew their days were numbered. After Vision’s final event, Nichols moved on to collaborate on other endeavors. His most ambitious among them was the staged reading of his script “Merser Piece Meets O,” inspired by “The Missing Piece Meets the Big O” by Shel Silverstein.

(PHOTO: Courtesy of Harper Collins)

In Silverstein’s story, a circular creature realizes one day it’s missing its wedge-shaped piece. So it sets out on an adventure to find it. Nichols, whose script — loosely based on his life — started out as a story about a guy addicted to sex in D.C., saw the potential for improvements in his script. Nichols saw his main character, Merser, through his sexual escapades, also searching for something to complete him.

But if you ask Nichols who’s the big O or the missing piece he’ll smile, consider your question, and then tell you: “It’s all about perception.” To the women in Mercer’s life, he was the big O only because they were in pieces. But Merser was in pieces too. Oya, the woman Merser chases, is named after the Yoruba goddess for change. She’s Mercer’s big O.

The script, itself, works as a commentary on dating. “The conversation about relationships is interesting,” Nichols said. “A lot of people are looking for something specific in relationships when they need to look for themselves” first.

The script went through several edits, a process that took Nichols seven years to get it to the version staged Nov. 20, 2009, at the Goethe-Intitut/German Cultural Center near downtown Chinatown. Melani N. Douglass saw the entire process. “I feel like I saw sketches of this play go from a thought to a draft to the stage,” said Douglass, Nichols’s friend of more than seven years.

(PHOTO: Pete Taylor)

That process was possible because of sponsors such Carafe Wines in Alexandria, Va., and Universal Flowers. Others included Dr. Eleanor Traylor at Howard University, Lorraine Brown, Diane Brander and Nichols’s mom.

Douglass jumped at the opportunity to play Xi when another woman selected for the role couldn’t do it. The character Xi is one of Mercer’s love interests. Xi also represents energy and is the element for fire. (“Every time she comes into the scene something hot is going on,” Nichols said.) Douglass said, “I love what he did with that character. So I was excited.”

A major edit was when Nichols removed five sections from the first draft. “He keeps working at it,” Douglass said. “As a fellow artist, it was an honor to be a part of one of the stages of completion of this play.”

The night of the reading was a cold one. But that didn’t deter Hadiya Williams from being among the 80 people who packed out the auditorium in the Goethe-Institut. “The reading was excellent!” she posted on his Facebook page the next day. “The readers were great.”

With a review like that, why push the script to go on the big screen instead of a stage? “The energy of D.C. dictates that this be a movie that takes place on the streets of Washington, D.C.,” Nichols said. “That’s why I was specific about locations.” To put it on the stage, he added, would take away from what he wants his audience left with. “When people see it in a different city,” he said, they should “feel Washington, D.C.”

(PHOTO: Pete Taylor) Kobie Nichols with the ladies of his casts.

Williams had to appreciate that. “Thank you for the experience,” she said, “and much success on the next phase”—which includes Nichols introducing the screenplay in other cities through live readings. “One reading per city. I don’t want to over-saturate,” Nichols said. It’s enough if people are talking about it, which he hopes will keep it fresh. “I would rather them talk about it than keep seeing it.”

Nichols is also busy wrapping up a novel-in-progress he started back in Richmond. The story’s a speculative fiction about a guy who has three dimensions of living. The story chronicles the day of the guy’s death, from when he wakes to the time he’s killed. In each dimension, the guy – a prototype of Merser’s character – dies the same way, which alters the course of the character’s life. At the end, the main character remembers a conversation he had with God while in the womb. “We all have a path with God before we’re born,” Nichols said. That path determines “how our life plays out before we die.”

(PHOTO: Pete Taylor)

At the moment, Nichols is more alive than ever, especially after getting his sailor’s license in September 2009. “I have a strange love for water,” Nichols said. “I’ve always liked boats.”

After film, he said his next move is to offer the bed and breakfast experience on water, with boats at various ports around the world. Meanwhile, Nichols will settle for sailing his 19-foot boat, the “Flying Scott,” out at the Belle Haven Marina in Alexandria, Va., when the weather permits. He’s licensed to sail nationwide.

Considering Nichols’s journey to the person he’s become, perhaps his love of the water isn’t so strange after all. “I’m a where-the-wind-blows kind of guy,” he said. “That might be why I like sailing,” which has a rule, he added: “Know where your destination is first, then let the wind take you there.”

Nichols is riding an even bigger wind since that November night at the Goethe-Institut, when he watched his friends bring his characters to life. And to know that seven years worth of sweat equity wasn’t wasted, to see a dream on the verge of coming to fruition, could overwhelm anyone. “I don’t usually show my emotions,” the director said. “But that night, I was moved to tears.”

For updates, visit Kobie’s facebook page, myspace page and http://fpeg.com. Tune into “Hot Topics” on the web at http://youtube.com/hottopicsdc.

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Green Tea: The Harvest

Filed under: Article, Feature — 8 Comments
October 20, 2009

The scene is nighttime. A woman struts down D.C.’s U Street, ready for a night out on the town. Everything about her exudes feistiness.  Every bit of that spunk and spirit is in her thigh-high dress and wide shiny belt, her fishnet stockings and black leather jacket.

Even her auburn-colored blowout is flared in peacock fashion; her cranberry lipstick makes her mouth seem almost edible. And if this doesn’t entice you, the cameraman slows her strut so that she slides into each movement the way honey slides out a jar.

Green Tea 1 (courtesy)

(PHOTO: Coutesy)

And that’s just the humble side of Takeah Scott, known to her fans as Green Tea. The singer has fellas outside the Chili Bowl snapping their necks. Inside a lounge, she flirts with guys at the bar and has each one, in succession, trying to woo her off a black leather couch. She does all this while singing the theme song, Crazy Feelin’, which seems to trail wherever she goes.

Can Scott’s other persona compete with Green Tea? As an advocate on behalf of D.C.’s youth, Scott seems to think Green Tea’s fire and thunder pales in comparison to her passion as a social worker. “Initially, what drew me [to social work] was I wanted to help families communicate better,” she says.

For almost six years, Scott’s helped adolescents communicate through play therapy, which uses the therapeutic powers of play to help adolescents prevent or resolve psychosocial challenges and enhance their growth and development.

This form of therapy usually involves children, ages 3 through 11, and provides a way for them to express their experiences and feelings through a process that’s natural, self-guided and self-healing. Since a child’s experiences and knowledge are often communicated through play, it becomes an important way for them to know and accept themselves and others, according to child therapy sources.

“I love adolescents. I think they’re the most misunderstood,” Scott says. Overall, “I’m a people person and I love helping people to communicate their thoughts.” She hopes to communicate on a broader platform, when she leaves the profession soon to pursue music full-time.

(PHOTO: Coutesy)

(PHOTO: Coutesy)

Growing up listening to the Clark Sisters, Ella Fitzgerald and Donny Hathaway, the Southeast D.C.-native recalled being 3 years old – standing on top of tables and singing into a spoon to entertain family members.

The rites of passage for most Black singers start in the church. Scott started out singing at the Blood Redeeming Church of God in D.C. before she set out to make a bigger name for herself locally. Like most artists, her rites of passage involved her hitting up open mikes, or “tilling the ground” as she calls it.

Michael F. Willingham Jr. (known as emcee yU) spotted Scott at an open mike one night nine years ago. It was at a U Street venue formerly known as Bar Nun and currently called Pur. Willingham was impressed. “I thought she had skills after seeing her perform,” the Suitland, Md.-based emcee recalled.

Those skills caught him by surprise. “I like how she’s kind of like a sleeper,” Willingham said, referring to her humility. “I didn’t think such a big presence would come from her.” One night, she stopped her performance to bring up Willingham to flow on a song with her. ”I thought it was generous of her,” he says.

Since that night nine years ago, the emcee says he’s seen a lot of growth in her work. “I never got to tell her face to face that I love the video she did with Roddy Rod,” Willingham says. “I wish her the best in all of her future endeavors.”

Scott continued tilling that ground by doing free shows and jumping at opportunities to sing whenever requested – all of this while working a day job as a social worker and a part-time job as a therapist.

A typical day for Scott is waking up at 6 a.m., going to her full-time job, and then her part-time job in the evenings. If she has a gig, she does it after her part-time job. If not, she hits the studio to record or brainstorm ideas for new songs. On the off days, she’s hanging out with her “superman.”

“It’s also difficult…when you’re trying to do so many things and you’re also in a relationship,” Scott says. “It’s hard work,” she adds, with a laugh. “That’s another job. Add that to the list.”

If there’s a lesson to be learned from her rites of passage, Scott says it’s protecting her brand and reputation. “Your gift can take you into places where your character can’t keep you,” a wise man once told her.

“There are artists who have been out in the game for a long time, but they don’t do well because their attitude,” Scott says. Of the process, she added: “You’re really just tilling the ground and your harvest will eventually come.”

(PHOTO: Courtesy)

(PHOTO: Coutesy)

Her harvest came with the 2005 release of her first album, Have a Cup of Green Tea Dosage I: Shades of Green. That year, she started singing professionally and met another local artist.

“Takeah is a very talented artist and performer,” says Terrence Cunningham, a singer and musician and songwriter living in Suitland, Md. Cunningham recalled meeting Scott four years ago at a show they were both billed to perform at. “Bright, exuberant” and “great performer” are some adjectives he used to describe Scott. Said Cunningham, “Be sure to look out for her.”

Another harvest came in 2008, when Scott released her second album, Dosage II: Choices. Unlike her first album, Scott says she had a plan this time. Aaron Abernathy, a singer and songwriter and vocal arranger who worked with Scott on the second album, agreed. “She knew what she wanted to do. She was prepared,” says the 26-year-old (known by his performance name “AB“), who recalled meeting Scott in late 2005, while gigging in the D.C. area. “She told me she was working on her second album and was looking for a certain type of feeling,” says Abernathy, now located in Los Angeles. “We just started recording together.”

On Dosages II: Choices, he did most of the vocal arrangements, wrote two songs and did a duet with Scott. “A lot of blood, sweat and tears, but it was a good process,” Abernathy says. On work ethic, he added: “We used to go [into the studio] for three-hour blocks. She would just knock songs out.” They knocked the album out in three months, doing studio sessions only on weekends.

Her plan for the second album was to target the east coast, doing shows in Virginia, D.C. and Baltimore, and build grassroots campaigns in those areas before branching out. So far, she’s performed in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York. Her plan also includes her working on a mixtape, “Beautiful Weirdos: The Outcast,” due out soon. Her upcoming performances include this Thursday at Peace and Cup of Joe in Baltimore, and Oct. 30 at Spirit of Faith Christian Center in Temple Hills, Md.

(PHOTO: Gypsy Soul Photography)

(PHOTO: Gypsy Soul Photography)

But tilling those grounds has not been an easy task for Scott as an independent artist. Some of the cons included her exerting time and energy to promote herself, and paying for everything. The task is even more difficult being a woman on the road. There’s the fact that “some people don’t take women seriously,” Scott says. “If you happen to have anything that appeals – you have breasts or a behind – people tend to look at that more so than the craft.”

Since she’s been on the road, Scott has had to deal with harassment from male fans trying to get her phone number after shows. During a performance, some guys even made gestures of holding their hearts and blowing kisses at her. “I’m like, ‘You guys are crazy,’” she recalled. “’Absolutely crazy.’” She’s also dealt with show promoters trying to take her out on dates instead of paying her. “No. You pay me,” Scott recalled saying.

But the pros make it all worthwhile, she says. “The liberty and freedom to be who you are, for you to experiment,” she says. “Your creative freedom…to change direction as you see fit for flexibility is also” worth it. She has her family and friends to help her overcome some of the cons.

Scott’s recent harvest included a performance at Eden’s Lounge in Baltimore and another one at the 4th Annual International Soul Music Summit (ISMS), from Sept. 24 – 27 in Atlanta.

The largest music conference in the world dedicated to the soul genre, the ISMS is a forum for the exchange of information relating to the business of soul music and a showcase for new and emerging Soul artists, according to soulmusicsummit.net.

Since the inaugural summit in 2006, the number of attendees has grown from more than 500 to more than 1,900 in 2008, according to the Web Site. This year’s summit included panels on artists, retail, radio, management, performance and consumers. It also featured live performances and concerts/acoustic jam sessions, a themed networking session, DJ parties, and unsigned artists showcases.

Additionally, the summit featured a fashion show, The Recognition & Homage Awards show, art gallery showcases and exclusive VIP parties with headlining artists. Rashaan Patterson, Dionne Farris, Jaguar Wright, Raphael Saddiq, Van Hunt, N’Dambi and Tony Rich are among the past notable guests who’ve attended the conference.

(PHOTO: Gypsy Soul Photography)

(PHOTO: Gypsy Soul Photography)

In a video of the Eric Roberson Show at this year’s summit, Scott wins over the crowd with her song, “Soul Connection.”

Prior to singing that selection, she had a discussion with the crowd. She asked the crowd of mostly women if they’ve ever dated someone, thinking things were going right until the person showed them otherwise. The crowd yelled back: “That’s right!” and “You got it girl!”

Holding up a palm, Scott continued, “You do everything like you’re a couple, but really you’re in that gray area.” Scott paused for effect, then said, “Well, I got tired of being in the gray area.” And the crowd cheered.

A woman yelled out when Scott sang, “You can’t give it to me because we ain’t on the same page spiritually.” And as if the song summed up his experiences too, the cameraman shouted, “Sing it, girl!” The crowd was singing it too when they joined in on the chorus: ”I want a soul connection, connection, not a soul disconnect.”

Of the overall plan, the singer says it’s continuing to promote her albums and her brand anyway she can. ”I’m working hard to just get out there and branch out from the D.C., Baltimore and Virginia area,” Scott says. “I want to be locally known and internationally accepted.”

For more information on Green Tea, visit her online at myspace.com/greenteasoul and at A Diary of an Independent Artists on youtube.com/choctyde. Her CDs are available at cdbaby.com/greenteamusic2, iTunes and her shows.

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Randall Dottin: A Filmmaker’s Tale of Perseverance

Filed under: Article, Feature — Leave a comment
October 2, 2009
(PHOTO: Courtesy)

(PHOTO: Courtesy)

If you asked him 30 years ago what he wanted to be, Randall Dottin would have said, “An actor like Bill Cosby.”

He would have told you he raced home after school every day to catch Cosby in old episodes of I Spy and The Electric Company, and how he even tried to catch him on the silver screen. “I really wanted to be an actor,” the 37-year-old says.

The Cambridge-native didn’t know then fate had a bigger plan for him — one that entailed him being behind a camera instead of in front of one. Dottin thought he was chasing a calling when he played the leading role in an elementary school play that was a version of The Gingerbread Man.

He thought he was chasing that calling in high school, when he traveled and performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland during the summer of 1988. Dottin, who was 15 at the time, didn’t know the open arts festival was the largest one of its kind.

Started in 1947, the festival continues to feature big names in showbiz and street performers, according to edfringe.com. It covers a range of art forms from theater, comedy, children’s shows and dance; to physical theater, musicals and operas; to all genres of music, exhibitions and events. In 2008, hundreds of groups participated in putting on more than 2,000 different shows with a total of more than 31,000 performances in 247 venues.

When Dottin attended that festival as part of a theatre group from St. Sebastian’s High School, he didn’t know it would change his life.

(PHOTO: Courtesy) Randall Dottin, left, poses with his friends after their high school graduation in 1990.

(PHOTO: Courtesy) Randall Dottin, left, poses with his friends after their high school graduation in 1990.

At the festival, he saw a one-man show based on Alex Haley’s The Autobiography of Malcolm X. It was the first time he had heard of the Muslim minister, public speaker and human rights activist. In retrospect, Dottin says, “It’s so funny how a young Black kid” – from the U.S. – “goes to the UK and finally hears about Malcolm X.”

That moment was the second of many Dottin says developed his consciousness. The first was before that trip, when he came across an article on Spike Lee and August Wilson. While reading that article, he was struck by how prominent the two African-American men are in the arts.

With his 1986 film, She’s Gotta Have It, Lee’s credited for leading the new wave of young Black independent filmmakers “armed with audacious visions and fresh perspectives about black life,” writes Greg Braxton in a March 2008 article for the Los Angeles Times. These indie filmmakers included Robert Townsend, the Hughes brothers, Mario Van Peebles, Charles Burnett, Matty Rich and John Singleton. According to Braxton, “They created comedies and dramas barbed with sharp perspectives on race, class, social conditions and politics.”

August Wilson was a playwright, whose literary legacy is the ten-play series, known as The Pittsburgh Cycle. For that series he won two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama. Each play is set in a different decade, portraying both the comic and tragic aspects of the African Americans living through the 20th century. Nine of the plays are set in Pittsburgh’s African-American neighborhood, known as the Hill District.

Both Lee and Wilson were unapologetic about using the culture of their people in their works. The way they used it, Dottin recalls, “Was inclusive and not exclusive.” It became clear to him then what his calling was. Dottin wasn’t sure how he would do it but knew he was going to be an indie filmmaker.

His personal and artistic journey that started in the summer of 1988 took him to Dartmouth College, where he majored in film and graduated in 1994. It took him to Columbia University, where he completed his MFA in Film in 2003.

(PHOTO: images.businessweek.com)

(PHOTO: images.businessweek.com)

At Dartmouth, Dottin won two awards for a play and a short film. He also scored an opportunity that took him to New York City, where he currently lives. Looking back, Dottin’s convinced fate had a hand in making things happen for him. As an undergrad, he was walking the halls of the college’s film department in 1993, when he spotted a billboard posting and jumped at the opportunity to intern at Spike Lee’s production company, 40 Acres and a Mule.

Prior to offering the internship, Spike Lee struck a six-picture deal with Universal Studios, which resulted in the director opening a story development department to solicit scripts to be made into feature films. Cirri Nottage, a Dartmouth alum, was hired to head that department. She sent the notice that was posted on the billboard Dottin almost passed up on his way to class. Coming across Dottin’s application in the pile, Nottage read he had won a scriptwriting competition for his play, Hustle.

(PHOTO: Evan Sung for The New York Times) In Fort Greene, Brooklyn, a 1930s firehouse that has been converted into two duplex lofts was leased to Spike Lee and his production company, 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks for the past 22 years.

(PHOTO: Evan Sung for The New York Times) In Fort Greene, Brooklyn, a 1930s firehouse that has been converted into two duplex lofts was leased to Spike Lee and his production company, 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks for the past 22 years.

The play, currently being adapted for the screen, is about three generations of street ball players and the struggle to overcome the legacy of betrayal. The idea came out of a conversation Dottin and the play’s producers had about the absence of Black fathers and its effects in urban communities. “These young men are growing up without the guidance…and they’re forced to choose men in their communities to follow that are not really helping them grow and man-up,” Dottin says. They’re “not helping them learn about themselves or how to serve themselves, their families and communities.” In Hustle, the playground is where Black youths seek out their missing fathers. And while they might not find them there, the game, itself, becomes a surrogate with its rules and disciplines. On the court, they learn the game has costs and benefits. “When you play street ball, if you practice the game and become excellent, the game will come back to you,” Dottin says. “People of the community will give you the love that you may not experience at home.”

Impressed by this, Nottage invited Dottin to New York for an interview. He got the gig. It was the summer of 1993. Spike Lee was shooting Crooklyn at the time and was wrapping up the theatrical run of his other movie, Malcolm X.

As an intern, Dottin’s primary duties were to read scripts and run errands to the set of Crooklyn, where he watched daily shoots as a perk of the internship. Because of 40 Acres’ open submission policy, “Everybody was sending in scripts; people were even sending in handwritten scripts in hopes that Spike Lee would produce their movie,” Dottin recalls. There was even an extreme case when a guy called in, claiming to be chased by the mob. “I just need a little office where I can write this script that I know is going to be hot,” Dottin recalls the caller saying. “Do you think you could talk to Spike about getting me an office at 40 Acres and a Mule?’”

It was an experience Dottin enjoyed, and one that taught him a valuable lesson. “I saw a little bit of the pressure that was put on Spike Lee because he was the only African American consistently directing films at the time,” he says. “I saw a glimpse of that pressure and how he worked really hard to keep on making movies despite what the obstacles were.”

(PHOTO: blackclassicmovies.com)

(PHOTO: blackclassicmovies.com)

Lee and several others from his generation were heirs to a tradition that predates them. “Race movies” was a film genre that existed in the U.S. between 1915 and 1950. The films were produced for an all-black audience and featured an all-Black casts. “These movies…provided employment for hundreds of underutilized talents languishing in servile roles in mainstream filmmaking,” writes Violet Glaze in a February 2006 article for the Baltimore City Paper. “Directors such as Oscar Micheaux took pains to reflect an African-American life more familiar and optimistic to the newly, or nearly, middle-class Black audience hungry to see their own on screen.”

At 40 Acres and a Mule, Dottin says he saw Lee continue that tradition by fighting for Black teamsters to drive some of the trucks and fighting with unions to make sure there were crew people of color. “I think because we’ve been so successful, we don’t really think about those battles that he fought,” Dottin says. “It’s a legacy that we need to understand lest we forget and things change.”

More than 20 years after Lee kicked down the door for his generation, Tyler Perry has emerged and established himself as a dominant voice. In his LA Times article, Braxton described Perry’s films as a “traditional formula of romantic, family-centered melodrama – spiced with over-the-top, insult-hurling characters.” But Perry’s popularity has sparked debates among Black filmmakers and observers. Among them was D’Angela Steed, one of the heads of Strange Fruit Media, who accused Hollywood of suffering from the Tyler Perry Syndrome. “We want to tell multidimensional stories with in-depth characters,” Steed told the Times. When her company pitched a made-for-TV drama to a cable network, she claimed their response was, “What’s the Tyler Perry version?” Her partner, Nia Hill, told the Times that the images Perry’s characters portray are too stereotypical to be taken lightly.

On the other side of that debate is Dottin. “The people who are really harsh critics of Tyler Perry…need to see the

(PHOTO: Christian Lantry / Corbis Outline) Born into poverty and raised in a household scarred by abuse, Tyler fought from a young age to find the strength, faith and perseverance that would later form the foundations of his much-acclaimed plays, films, books and shows, according to his bio at tylerperry.com.

(PHOTO: Christian Lantry / Corbis Outline) Born into poverty and raised in a household scarred by abuse, Tyler fought from a young age to find the strength, faith and perseverance that would later form the foundations of his much-acclaimed plays, films, books and shows, according to his bio at tylerperry.com.

bigger picture,” he says. “The bigger picture is that we’re focusing on Tyler Perry because Tyler Perry is the only consistent producer of Black films that we have, right now.” Dottin noted that Perry’s films speak to middle-aged, Black, church-going women – an audience Perry learned to connect with through the plays he produced before becoming a filmmaker.

Seeing validity to some of the criticisms, Dottin also challenged filmmakers who don’t like Perry’s films to make their own. To hear him tell it, he doesn’t allow himself to be affected by the so-called Tyler Perry Syndrome in Hollywood. “I realized throughout my study of independent filmmaking and filmmakers that Hollywood has never given anyone a chance,” says Dottin, who knew fate could only take him so far. “You got to go and take that shit.”

It’s that attitude that pushed Dottin to get his Columbia University MFA thesis film, A-ALIKE, out to the public when no one was rushing to give him a deal. A-ALIKE is the story of two brothers from opposite sides of the social spectrum. One brother is a corporate executive and the other brother is an ex-convict. The corporate executive picks up his brother from prison on the day of his release. “They haven’t seen each other in four years,” Dottin says. On their ride home, the story becomes more about the struggle of two brothers trying to reconcile their estrange relationship and to reconcile the choices they made in their lives and how those choices split them apart. “In the climax of the movie,” the filmmaker says, “they realize that despite the facts that they made choices that took them in different directions they realize how alike they are.” Because of that determination, Dottin’s film won numerous awards including the Director’s Guild of America Award for Best African-American Student Filmmaker, Best Short Film at the Roxbury Film Festival and the Gold Medal in the Narrative Category in the 2004 Student Academy. A-ALIKE placed second in the National Board Review of Motion Picture Award and was a finalist in the HBO Short Film Competition at the American Black Film Festival. Additionally, A-ALIKE was screened at the Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival. The film was licensed for a two-year broadcast run by HBO in 2003.

(Flyer: Courtesy)

(Flyer: Courtesy)

Columbia News, an online publication of Columbia University’s Office of Communication and Public Affairs, reported that Dottin’s film beat out more than 200 entries nationwide in the highly competitive narrative category at the 31st annual Student Academy Awards. “We are proud of Columbia’s record, which indicates pretty clearly how strong our filmmaking program has become,” Dan Kleinman, chairman of the School of the Arts Film Division, told the news service in 2004. “Congratulations to Randy, who is having a wonderful year and deserves all this recognition.”

That attitude of taking what Hollywood wouldn’t give him also got Dottin recruited by Fox Searchlab in 2004 after being honored by the Director’s Guild of America. The Searchlab is a program for emerging directors who sign a first look deal with Fox Searchlight when they enroll. They have a year to make a short that becomes an audition piece for Fox executives. If the short is successful, the filmmaker enters into a two-picture deal with the studio. Randall’s short film, LIFTED, was completed in the Winter of 2007.

LIFTED is a story of a young mother/dancer who wants to be the greatest dancer ever. She hasn’t had a job in five years since she’s been taking care of her son. One night, she goes out for the biggest audition of her life and fails. She attributes her failure to her raising her son – something she sees as a burden and distraction that hinders her from pursuing her dreams. The night of her failed audition, the mother abandons her son at a pizza shop. What ensues is an encounter between the mother and spiritual guardian on a subway platform. The spiritual guardian sets the mother straight. “The story is all about a woman struggling to regain her worth and to see that all of these experiences and people are in her life for a purpose,” Dottin says. LIFTED premiered at New York’s Schomburg Library for Research in Black Culture.

The filmmaker wasn’t deterred by setbacks he encountered while shooting LIFTED, a film that cost him $80,000 to make. “I built a $25,000 subway set on a soundstage in Connecticut; the same soundstage where they shot Amistad,” Dottin says. “We shot it and we were going to do some re-shooting, and the set burned to the ground.” With $25,000 literally up in smoke, the filmmaker had a choice: he could either fold up his bags and call it quits or rebuild the set and finish shooting. “I had to finish it,” Dottin says. “I had to get my movie done.”

(PHOTO: Courtesy) Randall Dottin, front left, celebrates before the Premiere Screening of LIFETED at Skywalker Sound

(PHOTO: Courtesy) Randall Dottin, front left, poses with friends outside of Skywalker Sound before the premiere screening of LIFTED.

The perseverance paid off. LIFTED went on to screen at more than 30 film festivals and won 10 festival awards. The film continues to be requested for several screenings as an educational tool. Dottin has screened the film and led discussions at academic institutions such as Brooks Academy, Phillips Andover Academy and Noble and Greenough School in Massachusetts and Community Works, an arts in education program in New York City.

Dottin is currently at work on INDELIBLE, a story about a Black female scientist who races to find a cure for a rare disease that killed her husband and threatens to kill her son. The lead character has been engaged in a struggle with a corporate pharmaceutical industry to make drugs that save lives and make money. She runs head-on into the struggle when she realizes that her son is getting close to the age when he can contract this disease. The question for her becomes: Does she spend more time in the lab at the sacrifice of spending time with her son? or Does she spend more time with her son at the sacrifice of creating a cure for her son’s disease? “One way or another, when the disease becomes full-blown in her child, the disease will kill him,” says Dottin, who didn’t write the film. Instead, it was written by Mikki Del Monico and produced by Melanie Williams Oram.

The three of them recently won the Alfred P. Sloan Foundations $100,000 feature film grant. This award, given in conjunction with Columbia University will be used as seed money to start production on Dottin’s feature film debut as a director.

As part of his activism, Dottin founded and served as artistic director of Middle Passage Filmworks in 2001. The film production company strives to access and build on the cultural memory of the African Diaspora to create entertaining and empowering stories about people of color. “The best of our art taps both the spirits of our ancestors,” says Dottin, whose West Indian roots are through a grandfather from Barbados and a grandmother from Montserrat. Middle Passage Filmworks aims to join this tradition, using the lense of the African Diaspora to tell stories that touch everyone.

Randall Dottin poses with students, Cheleta Buddo and Sinede Rosales, at the graduation from the New York Film Academy in August.

(PHOTO: Courtesy) Randall Dottin poses with students, Cheleta Buddo and Sinede Rosales, at their graduation from the New York Film Academy in August.

Dottin currently teaches screenwriting, directing and acting at New York Film Academy. He also teaches for an arts in education program called “Making A Difference” as part of the community works organization. Through that program, he teaches at three New York City high schools – at PS241 in Central Harlem, he teaches digital photography; he teaches film at Mott Haven Village Prep High School in the Bronx and the High School for Math Science and Engineering on the campus of City College of New York. Dottin likened the classroom to a movie set because much like directors on a set, teachers are leaders of their classrooms. He notes that learning is a collaborative effort between teachers and students, just as it is between directors, their actors and crew.

At this point, Dottin’s students could be anyone looking to get into the film industry. His lesson for them? “You cannot take no for an answer…If you take no for an answer, that’s a sign of being mediocre,” says Dottin, whose recent honor by indieWIRE lets him know otherwise. In February, he was listed as one of the top ten new exciting voices in African American Cinema. “This game is hard enough,” Dottin says. “In the world of film, you cannot afford to be average or mediocre.”

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Averlyn Archer: The Prophetic Bullhorn

Filed under: Article, Feature — 5 Comments
September 26, 2009
(Photo: Keston Duke Photography) Averlyn Archer, program director at the Harlem Arts Alliance, founded Canvas Paper and Stone Gallery in 2006.

(Photo: Keston Duke Photography) Averlyn Archer, program director at the Harlem Arts Alliance, founded Canvas Paper and Stone Gallery in 2006.

An old religious maxim says prophecy and imagination go hand-in-hand. So while society’s collective conscience can be limited, prophets operate on an elevated understanding of the world around them.

These individuals were community historians and storytellers of their generation. Ask Averlyn Archer, founder and director of the Canvas Paper and Stone Gallery in Harlem, who the modern prophets are. And the Trinidadian-born, Brooklyn-raised 46-year-old will simply say, “The artists.”

Archer plays a special role in developing these artists. She’s a resource they use to get additional venues for their performances and art exhibitions. She also helps them apply for grants and preps them to successfully go before review boards. She’s a woman of many hats – a seasoned art collector, gallery owner and program director for a prestigious arts alliance.

Add those to her more than 10 years’ experience in Internet advertising, e-commerce and her work as a corporate attorney on multimedia and interactive technology, and Archer’s somewhat of a megaphone amplifying the messages of Harlem’s prophets to the global community. To hear her tell it, the intent is out of her love for the arts. “It’s meditative,” she said. “It’s inspiring and healing.”

It’s a discovery Archer made in 1981, while a student studying English and Sociology at The City College of the City University of New York (CCNY). That same year, the Genesis II Museum of International Black Culture was founded as CCNY’s museum-in-residence.

(Photo: http://www.georgeranalli.com) The City College of New York.

(Photo: http://www.georgeranalli.com) The City College of New York

There, Archer had access to the museum’s several galleries and exhibits including the African Sculpture Court, the Egyptian and Haitian Galleries. “That’s when I discovered art – Black art, in particular – that was geared towards our history and culture,” she said, adding that she couldn’t imagine her life now without art.

That curiosity sent her packing and traveling internationally to art galleries and museums in Cuba, Thailand and, most recently, Scotland, where she explored the ruins of 500-year-old castles. She said, “I realized this was something I was excited and passionate about.”

But that passion was not without a setback. In 1997, Archer launched the Genesis Art Line. The online African-American gallery was successful enough for her to open American Visions 145, a Harlem-based retail gallery, in 2001. After a two-year run, the gallery was closed. She tried again in 2006 with Canvas Paper and Stone, a gallery and retail store that started online. A year later, Archer opened the fine art gallery on Frederick Douglass Boulevard in Harlem.

(Photo: africanastudies.as.nyu.edu) Deborah Willis, who's pursued a dual professional career as an art photographer and as one of the nation's leading historians of African American photography and curator of African American culture, is on the list of artists who exhibited her work at Canvas Paper and Stone.

(Photo: africanastudies.as.nyu.edu) Deborah Willis, an art photographer and one of the nation's leading historians of African American photography and curator of African American culture, is on the list of artists who exhibited her work at Canvas Paper and Stone.

Canvas Paper and Stone has been going strong ever since. The list of artists who’ve exhibited works there include Otto Neals, TAFA, Francks Deceus, Charly Palmer, Deborah Willis, Diane Waller, Dianne Smith, Mary Heller and Aleathia Brown. Keeping with its original objective, the gallery educates its clientele about contemporary visual art. At the same time, it works to make its artists business savvy.

In December 2007, the gallery teamed up with marketing guru Andrew Morrison to launch the artist strategic marketing workshops.  “While our artists are amazingly talented, like most of us, they are not able to give the business end of their art much attention,” Archer told BlackStarNews.com.

During that workshop, artists learned various strategies to immediately improve their marketing skills. These strategies included repackaging their business brand, according to Morrison, founder of Small Business Camp – an entrepreneurial training, coaching and marketing firm. This way, he told BlackStarNews.com, “You allow your clients to get to know you, and also buy from you which in turn leads to you becoming more successful.”

That success for emerging artists is also due, in part, to Archer becoming program director at the Harlem Arts Alliance last year. The service organization nurtures the growth and development of its more than 400 individual members and arts organizations in Harlem and its surrounding communities. Archer ended up there after co-creating ArtCrawl Harlem, a bus guided tour designed to increase audiences for Harlem’s art galleries and artists.

The roughly four-hour tour consists of seven gallery sites, a light snack and a trolley tour through Harlem while the guide points out various pieces of public art. “Heath Gallery, the meeting spot for the tour, is set inside a gorgeous brownstone across from Marcus Garvey Park,” writes Shane Ferro in her arts and entertainment blog.  The tour concludes with dinner, wine and live music. The annual event, which started in 2008, is produced in collaboration with Canvas Paper and Stone, Taste of Harlem Food and Cultural Tours and the Harlem Arts Alliance. “This is our second year,” says Jacqueline Orange, with Taste of Harlem. She met Archer after moving from Chicago to Harlem in 2002. Describing their working relationship as “great,” she says, “We compliment each other.” Of Archer’s resourcefulness, Orange adds, “She will find an art show on the dark side of the moon.”

Averlyn Archer 2

(Photo: Keston Duke Photography)

Along the tour route, participants stop at the Essie Green Gallery, Hamilton Landmark Galleries, Gallery M, Tribal Spears Gallery and The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. On a recent press tour that stopped at Canvas Paper and Stone, Archer noted that 70 percent of the art in her gallery are created by artist in the community, and 80 percent of it comes from artists of color.

In an April 13, 2008 article, the Harlem News Group reported that the tour also included the mosaic mural on the Capital One Bank Building at 125th Street, the Harriet Tubman sculpture at Frederick Douglass Boulevard and West 122nd Street, and the Adam Clayton Powell sculpture at the Harlem State Office Building. The point Archer was hoping to drive home with the tour was this : “We’re surrounded by art.”

What she also hoped to get across to the tour group was for them not to take the art lightly, and to recognize what she calls the “intuitive” and “spiritual” nature of artists. “Artists are storytellers and prophets,” Archer said. “They’re imparting to us some information that possibly we wouldn’t get elsewhere.”

For more information on Canvas Paper and Stone, visit the gallery online at http://www.canvaspaperandstone.com.

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Aniekan Udofia: You Think You Know, But You Don’t

Filed under: Article, Feature — 1 Comment
September 9, 2009
Photo by Jati Lindsay

Photo by Jati Lindsay

Stand in any metropolitan corridor and ask the art scene denizens there what they know about Aniekan Udofia. Some might list the 33-year-old among the most talented visual artists of his generation, with national attention on his work in hip hop magazines such as XXL, Vibe and The Source.

And on a local level, others might even christen the Nigerian artist as “the face of the D.C. art movement that mixes political themes with a hip-hop aesthetic.” But no matter what you hear, Aniekan will tell you himself they only scratch the surface of who he really is.

For starters, meet his parents, Dr. George and Edna Udofia. They came to the U.S. from Nigeria for school while Civil War raged back in their home country (the Nigeria-Biafra War lasted from July 6, 1967 to Jan. 15, 1970). Nigerians first came to the United States to attend American universities, intending to return home, writes Kalu Ogbaa in his book “The Nigerian Americans.” But for the first time in Nigeria history, the civil war “became the cause of immigration, and more students from the war-ravaged Eastern Nigeria easily made good cases for their immigration to the United States.” So George and Edna studied law and nursing, respectively, at universities in Washington, D.C. They settled down and started a family. Aniekan, the second of five children and the first son in the family, was born on Nov. 26, 1975.

Ogbaa, professor of English and Africana Studies at Southern Connecticut State University, continues: “The gloomy sociopolitical and economic conditions in Nigeria resulting from their civil war were so unbearable for Easterners that everybody wanted to flee the country.” By 1980, the number of Nigerian immigrants in the U.S. rose to 25,528. In addition, the emergence of military dictatorships, the abuse of power and denial of human rights also led to a mass exodus of trained personnel in university institutions from Nigeria. By 1990, the number of Nigerians in the U.S. more than doubled to 55,350. But instead of following the trend, George and Edna decided to whisk their children away from their birth place in Northwest D.C. to Nigeria’s Akwa Ibom state in 1982.

Aniekan, who was 7 at the time of the trip, is of the Ibibio people, one of more than 250 ethnic groups in Nigeria – the three most popular being Yoruba, Ibo (or Igbo) and Hausa-Fulani. Located in southeastern Nigeria, mainly in the Cross River state, the Ibibio are rainforest cultivators of yams, taro, and cassava. They export mostly palm oil and palm kernels; they’re also noted for their skillful wood carving.

Back in Nigeria, George taught French in high school, and Edna was a health educator. They had high hopes for their first son, Aniekan. “As a patriarchal society, sons are trained to be strong and assertive and to develop leadership qualities that will enable them to inherit the leadership roles of their fathers at home, should such fathers die or become old, ill, or infirm,” Ogbaa writes. In addition, “They are supposed to be providers of their family members’ needs and to give them security as well as emotional and economic protection at all times.” According to Aniekan, his parents thought he was destined to go to college and major in something more practical than art, or pick up a trade and work with his hands. But instead, he embraced a movement from overseas.

Afro Beat King...Fela Kuti by Aniekan

Afro Beat King…Fela Kuti by Aniekan

Having grown up on highlife, a musical genre that originated in Ghana in the 1900s before eventually spreading to Sierra Leone, Nigeria and other West African countries by 1920, Aniekan was familiar with legends such as Ibo highlife innovator Sonny Okosun and Victor Olaiya, a Yoruba singer and trumpeter. But hip hop captured the then-17-year-old in ways highlife couldn’t. “It was the expression of it…Even with Slick Rick, how he tells the story,” Aniekan recalls. “He’s rapping, but it’s like he’s singing…the art of twisting words.” (He likened listening to Kool G Rap, a precise wordsmith, to “playing Tetris at high-speed.”) Aniekan’s first encounter with the art form was through a friend, who passed him a Kid ‘N Play cassette tape in 1992. Other encounters came through friends who got VHS tapes of Yo! MTV Raps from their relatives in the U.S. “We didn’t have a VCR,” Aniekan says. “It was like one person in the hood had one, so we would all go 15 deep to that person’s crib, hang out, watch those videos and get all hype, trying to talk like the guys in the videos.”

At the same time, record shops started popping up all over Uyo, a city that became a capital of Akwa Ibom State on Sept. 23, 1987. “You had DJs who had spots like that and they put these big speakers outside,” Aniekan says. “That’s where we used to hang out.” Other hang-outs were barbershops, which usually consisted of a closet-sized space with a chair, a sign, a comb and some clippers. Some barbers were fortunate enough to turn their humble beginnings into a franchise. One such barber was “Big Stuff,” who had three shops in commercial areas throughout Uyo.

Photo by blogs.sun.com/christophersaul

Photo by blogs.sun.com/christophersaul

At the time, it was customary for barbers to commission local artists to create price lists and posters for their shops. Big Stuff commissioned an artist that completely changed Aniekan’s life. Through this artist, the budding hip hop head would understand the power of expression through illustrations. “It was a guy named Arabian…He would do shit and you would just look at the piece [amazed],” Aniekan says. “He had a lot of creativity.” He recalls Arabian incorporating hip hop styles, with guys dressed in hoodies and posing in the stylish rides of the time. “The style was so crazy the way he did it. Every last one he did was different.” There was a price list, where a guy had a finger over his mouth while another hand pointed to a price list painted in what looked like a hole in the wall. Another one was an illustration of three guys posted up outside a well – one guy on a cell phone, the other on look-out while the third pulled a price list out of the well. “His imagination was just something crazy,” Aniekan says. “Crazy!”

However, his hopes of finding a mentor in Arabian were dashed when they met in 1995. Until that point, Aniekan would walk around with a sketchbook, looking for work that Arabian illustrated. “I would go try to copy it and practice at home,” Aniekan says. Noticing the young artist’s interest, Big Stuff gave Aniekan an Arabian piece from his shop to take home and study. “So I went and studied it and tried to figure out how he used the color, what kind of color he was using.” (“Was it watercolor or crayons?” he wondered). This was between 1994 and 1997, what he called his “study era.”

R.I.P Jay Dilla by Aniekan

R.I.P Jay Dilla by Aniekan

It’s the era he practiced the “photo-realistic” style of drawing. He experimented until he came up with his own style of drawing faces with color pencils and ink, and then pasting them over a different background. He was anxious when Big Stuff took him to Arabian’s home in 1995. “When I finally met him, I was all groupie-fied,” Aniekan says. “I get to meet him and I’m all shy.” The magic soon wore off, when Aniekan said Arabian had promised to draw him something. “He never really got around to it. It just turned into me constantly going over there and him blowing me off.”

He turned that discouragement into determination and set out on a one-man mission to figure out how Arabian did it. In the process, Aniekan slowly made a name for himself by drawing various haircut styles and selling it to barbers. He started coming up with his own concepts for barbershop posters. In an earlier creation, he took a piece of board and drew a hand cutting hair with an arrow pointing in the direction of the barber’s chair. “People would see it from down the hill and they would know a barber was right there,” Aniekan recalls. In exchange, the barber gave him $50 for the poster. Aniekan’s aim was to get his name, like Arabian’s, all over Uyo. He soon became a sought-after artist among local barbers asking him, “Yo, could you draw me some haircuts or whatever.”

Life is Worth Losing.... by Aniekan

Life is worth losing… by Aniekan

His popularity, however, wasn’t enough to impress his parents, nor quell their desires for him to fulfill his duties as first son. “I went to technical schools [and] vocational schools; they were trying to change my mind,” Aniekan says. But everywhere he went, he saw people as passionate about their fields as he was about art. During the 17-year battle with his parents, he wrote letters to an aunt that lives in D.C. After several correspondences, she granted his request by sending him a plane ticket to come and try his hand in the U.S. art industry. He came to D.C. in 1999, at the age of 24. Since he’s been here, he’s captured the national attention of clothing designers and magazines – no longer the new fish splashing around in the national art scene. He’s created designs for And 1, an urban athletic wear company, and was the premiere artist for the D.C.-based Native Tongue Urban Apparel line.

In addition, his works have been featured in various urban publications such as Rime, Elemental, DC Pulse and Frank 151. His illustrations also graced the album covers of hip hop artists such as Critically Acclaimed and Flex Mathew, as well as the covers of books and hip hop journals.

In 2004, Aniekan joined Artwork Mbilashaka (AM) Radio, a loose band of four to 10 visual artists and a DJ. They’re contracted by corporate clients to create a 7 x 5 artistic interpretation of their logo in front of a live audience. As a part of this group, Aniekan worked on projects for clients including Red Bull, Heineken, Honda, Current TV, Timberland and Adidas.

He uses hip hop themes as social commentary on issues he feel are left lingering such as religion, gender wars (“Is homosexuality right or wrong? Who’s to choose?”) and racism. They also focus on American consumerism. In one of his controversial pieces, former President George W. Bush is in several poses, holding machine guns. On his shirt: “Got Oil?”

Photo by Ziggy ThinkPositive Rayford

Photo by Ziggy ThinkPositive Rayford

Some of his work was controversial enough to draw criticism from viewers, and some galleries have even asked him to take down his paintings. Even still, his style of “telling the truth” is one most people can appreciate. In a June editorial review, Rhome Anderson (aka DJ Stylus) likened Aniekan to a local treasure. “From murals around town to his live improvised painting at musical events, Udofia is as much a fixture in the urban arts scene as the DJs, vocalists, producers and musicians,” Anderson writes on washingtonpost.com. “As part of the Words, Beats and Life’s ‘Remixing the Art of Social Change’ teach-in, Udofia was commissioned to craft a completely new series of pieces.”

On a Tuesday afternoon, Aniekan is hard at work on a new commission. His one-room apartment on 17th Street NW doubles as his ware house and art studio. Cross the threshold and you walk towards a stash of comic books neatly stacked alongside various hip hop and art magazines. Look around, and you’ll see a work-in-progress set on an easel in the middle of his kitchen – artwork lining the wall along the entrance, above his cabinets and into his bedroom. His most recent show, The Sickness 3, opened at Dissident Display on H Street NE in June. Aniekan wanted the show to be a departure from his popular hip hop-themed works. His peers’ reactions varied. “It was good and bad. There were some people who were like, ‘I’m not feeling this new, monochromatic, one-color-themed, crazy stuff,’” he recalls. “But then there were people who were like, ‘Wow! That’s actually dope.’ It’s a stretch and I feel I need to tend more towards that side.”

Photo by Rosina Photography

Photo by Rosina Photography

Looking around his kitchen, a reporter noticed a photo of Fela Kuti, the Nigerian multi-instrumentalist musician and composer. In the artwork, three different Felas take on different hues – a blue Fela looks up at a black and white Fela who’s playing a saxophone. In the background, a silver Fela raises his arms in a victory pose through an outline of Africa. When asked if Nigeria or elements of his Ibibio tribe ever work their way into his paintings, Aniekan looks up from a sketch to carefully consider his answer. “If I choose to do a specific back home kind of theme”–such as the EVOLUTION OF CULTURE show, which opened April 3 at Wisconsin Overlook on Wisconsin Avenue NW– “that’s when I usually bring out those traits of where I’m from,” Aniekan says. “It’s more of a choice.”

It’s a choice he feels that musicians and other artists should have the right to exercise without being labeled cultural sell-outs, or worst. Take Fela, the Afrobeat music pioneer and human rights activist. He didn’t start out as the political maverick he’s known as today. “He was into music…he started off with highlife, which he grew up into,” Aniekan says. When Fela noticed some social and economic issues went unaddressed, his music became his bullhorn – “where he started just banging on the presidents” and corrupt politicians. “That took him to another level,” Aniekan says. “He wasn’t writing just about Nigeria; what he wrote was pretty much Africa, itself, and the world.”

That connection with the world is what Aniekan is looking for with his art. He knows If he puts his art in a box labeled “African art,” it would narrow the scope of his work. The same thing if he only did “hip hop” paintings. So what does he do? He pushes himself with each painting. Aniekan says, “As a visual artist, it’s for people to see your progression.”

For more information on Aniekan Udofia, or to see more of his work, visit him at http://artofaniekanudofia.com/index.html and http://www.myspace.com/aniekanudofia. You can also visit his facebook page to keep up with the “Sickness” series.

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