Pomo Afro Homos: Fierce Love (Remix)

San Francisco

"Fierce Love (Remix)." Photo by Duane Cramer.

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"Uncompromisingly African American, uncompromisingly queer, and still remarkably universal." —Chicago Reader

RADAR L.A. FESTIVAL

In 1991 the groundbreaking group Pomo Afro Homos premiered Fierce Love: Stories from Black Gay Life and secured their place in the history of queer performance. Through a series of savvy vignettes, the company brought a humor as fierce as the love they explored, creating a theatrical touchstone at the intersection of race and sexuality. Now, two decades after its premiere, writer-director-performer Brian Freeman remixes the Pomo’s original production with a talented new crew of performers, and the occasional riff on the current moment. But the Pomos' indelible tales driven by clear and potent voices—from sad young men to signifying sissies to back-room roamers—remain as raucous and fresh as when they first took to the stage, enriched by new resonance and poignancy.

Directed by Brian Freeman
Text by Brian Freeman, Eric Gupton and DJola Branner
Performed by Thandiwe Thomas DeShazor, Brian Freeman, Dazié Rustin Grego and Rashad Pridgen

RUN TIME: 70 minutes

LOCATION: LATC: Theater 4

Los Angeles Theatre Center

514 South Spring Street, Los Angeles, CA 90013 | Map

PARKING: $5–6 event parking at several locations off Main and 6th Streets.

Fierce Love (Remix) is a National Performance Network (NPN) Re-Creation Fund Project sponsored by Theater Offensive in partnership with Dance Place, Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, REDCAT and NPN. The Re-Creation Fund is supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Ford Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency). For more information: www.npnweb.org.

Associated Images:

Date/Time	G	With 5 for $50 Flex Pass
Wed 6.15.11 8:30 pm	$20	$10
Thur 6.16.11 3:30 pm	$20	$10
Fri 6.17.11 9:30 pm	$20	$10
Sat 6.18.11 7:30 pm	$20	$10
Sun 6.19.11 7:00 pm	$20	$10

Date/Time

With
5 for $50

Flex Pass

Wed 6.15.11 8:30 pm

$20

$10

Thur 6.16.11 3:30 pm

$20

$10

Fri 6.17.11 9:30 pm

$20

$10

Sat 6.18.11 7:30 pm

$20

$10

Sun 6.19.11 7:00 pm

$20

$10

REDCAT NEWS

NOW 2018 - LA TIMES review

Review: And NOW, for something different at REDCAT

The Los angeles Times

By Mark Swed
Jul 20, 2018 | 2:25 PM
Vocalist Morgan Sorne and dancer Miwa Matreyek in 'Eat Your Young,' Thursday night in the first piece of the REDCAT New Original Works Festival. (Vanessa Crocini / REDCAT)

The annual summer New Original Works Festival at REDCAT has caught on. Close to 150 applications from local artists were received for the 15th iteration of the series, which began Thursday and involves three weeks of multi-culti, multi-ethnic, multi-media, multi-disciplinary, multi-everything-under-the-sun programs, each week offering something new. The opening night was sold out, and rightfully so for a town that thinks of itself as 21st century to the max.

But what does it all mean?

Singer Jasmine Orpilla, co-creator of the second piece, “About How Many Years Did We Fight the Beast Together,” a kind of opera inspired by traditional Filipino music and dance, is a “ritual performance artist,” soprano and experimental composer and dancer.

Jmy James Kidd, the choreographer for the third work, “Solid, Like a Rock,” “designs dances, clothing and spaces.” Among its 22 dancers are a “holistic Pilates instructor, movement coach and energy healer”; an “artist, musician, dance maker, yogini, former university professor and homo sapien”; a dancer, choreographer, performance artist and model; a dancer, actress, choreographer and filmmaker; and a dancer who “cultivates a practice of everyday poetics and magic to summon untold histories and dive into the semiotics of body memory.”

If this all sounds so, well, L.A., so be it. At this disquieting moment in time, there is something ineffably heartening about committed and searching artists with diverse skills and imagination. Each piece in this first trio of works offered a way out. Out of what wasn’t always clear, perhaps, but the reasons for getting out are compelling.

In “Eat Your Young,” Sorne, dressed in a three-piece suit and barefoot, produced waves of consonant-free, ether-filling song, electronically enhanced, along with added percussion effects. I didn’t notice any writhing frenzy around me, but there was a good, strong sonic wash.

Meanwhile, Miwa Matreyek — an animator, director, designer and performer — created shadow dances behind a small video screen. Her arms protruded over and under an seascape idyllic on the surface but beneath which floated yogurt containers and other material destined to contaminate the environment. This became more ominous, but no less beautiful, when the projection changed into an arboreal mandala eventually decaying into man-made urban destruction. Here, Matreyek may have been the shadow of humanity struggling to survive, while nature somehow retained its wonder.

More shadow dancers appeared in “How Many Years,” this time behind a sheet with no projections, in the first part of “Solid, Like a Rock.” Orpilla, in traditional Filipino dress, is a vocalist whose Tagalog-inflected song proved as effusive as Sorne’s keening. Her collaborator was choreographer, dancer and ethnologist Peter de Guzman. The dances came from the Pangalay tradition. Three musicians accompanied on an arrangement of kulintang gongs. I found the content indecipherable but not the ritual sensibility that seemed to evoke higher, better powers.

“Solid, Like a Rock” began with Tara Jane O’Neil at the rear of the stage hunched over an electric guitar, making drones. The dancers, in white or blue jump suits, entered on all fours, like sheep. Eventually, they were writhing on their backs, but not in frenzy, rather like a school of fish and then like petals in the wind propelled into a living flower.

Once erect, however, they found their frenzy like living Matisse dancers, except displaying a mix of ages and body shapes. And it was joy.

This, the longest of the three pieces, is only 23 minutes. The works, then, function like a sliver in time and place. After each, in a different way, the world looked a slightly more inhabitable and L.A. a little better poised to make a difference.

REDCAT

RADAR L.A. | Pomo Afro Homos

Pomo Afro Homos: Fierce Love (Remix)

Associated Images:

REDCAT NEWS

NOW 2018 - LA TIMES review

Review: And NOW, for something different at REDCAT