UNIVERSES…on BIRTHING AN AESTHETIC

No one ever quite knows where to place us, how to describe us or how to handle what we do, but this is the case with most work created by artists of color, who are most often born on the fringes of mainstream theater. Slots are created to justify our existence in the theater genre, when the theater we create should be called just that: theater. Black Theater, Latino Theater, Hip-Hop Theater, are all categories to describe the difference, but while proud of our black-ness, Latino-ness and hip-hop-ness, the richness of our cultures and sweet bosom of our audiences, we still struggle every time an explanation for our work is deemed necessary, to climb out of the pigeonholes that the American Theater shoves us into.

UNIVERSES create work that is suitable for anyone who lives life. We did not set out to create theater for segregated audiences. We set out to create theater for the older houses and their subscriber bases as well as for the new faces which are promisingly beginning to flood into theater house seats. We do not “age out“ audiences because we communicate best through a combination of inherited and reinvented voices. We create work with an audience development sensibility, where drastically different persons can sit side by side, and share similar experience, receiving a coded piece of themselves in the process. By offering delicately selected diversified samples of language, we invite audiences of all generations and cultural backgrounds to join us, while remaining true to our Afro-Latin-hip-hopin’ voices. Through slang we search and comb the gamut of language and culture, which make us who we are first and foremost: Poets, a necessary label by trade.

The core members of UNIVERSES, created an ensemble company rooted in the natural relationship born of friends and artists living in the same urban experience, working in the same circles, stomping throughout the same open mic venues. Growing out of New York City’s poetry scene – hitting at open mic venues around the city was the name of our game. Varying in age range, ethnic backgrounds and experiences, each member brings a different element of style to create an team of collaborating UNIVERSES in one very real world: Steven delivered the voice of Jazz and literary style from the ’70s to now; Mildred mixed Spanish Boleros with Gospel, the Blues and contemporary sounds and images; Gamal, “the bottom,” his roots reaching down into lyricism and music; Ninja brings the voice which grinds through the streets of our reality, our urbanity. And in no time, “this ensemble would echo the exodus from exaggerated Ebonics to an eclectic experiment examining the everyday expression.” Since 1996, UNIVERSES has worked steadily on building their craft, both as ensemble members and solo performers.

Our work will take you through what Lawrence Van Gelder of the New York Times described as “The City’s Beat, with an Iambic Heat,” (July 28, 2001):…the underground rattlers, where the beggar, the battery seller, and the religious rile the riders; to the streets, where walking is attitude; and to the tenements, where domestic disputes leave babies dead. All this, expressed through Latin riffs and gospel and bluesy laments, among other poetic forms. But God is here, too, and Ali and Jack Kerouac and the great Puerto Rican migration and Dr. Seuss; cause along with the politics of dislocation and the problems of assimilation and poorer neighborhoods and classrooms come fun and a feverish joy of language, expressed through riffs and gospel and bluesy laments, among other poetic forms.

Welcome to our Universe and the language from which we are born. Where we reclaim our inherited voices and remix them with our own. We hope you enjoy this ride as much as we have.