Theater Alliance & IN Series Produce POETRY FOR THE PEOPLE: THE JUNE JORDAN EXPERIENCE

The upcoming co-production of John Adams' I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky, from IN Series and Theater Alliance, is the latest in a swath of area theater postponements due to the region's COVID-19 transmission numbers.

The show, originally slated to perform this March, has been replaced by a brand new production celebrating the life of poet and activist June Jordan - who wrote the libretto for Ceiling/Sky.

"June Jordan was the reason I was drawn to I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky," said Theater Alliance Producing Artistic Director Raymond O. Caldwell, who was slated to direct the musical and will lead this new production. "While we are disappointed to not bring that show to audiences this spring, we are excited to instead put June Jordan herself in the spotlight - through an evening of her poetry, essays, songs, and revolutionary ideas."

The new work, called Poetry for the People: The June Jordan Experience, has been developed in collaboration with acclaimed pianist Adrienne Torf, June Jordan's partner both personally and professionally, who is now the key keeper of her legacy. The performance will bring together words, images, and music in a dynamic exploration of Jordan's activism, poetry, and personal life.

"June Jordan is a name that everyone should know, like Alice Walker or Audre Lorde. Her work imagines a future where Black people live well, where love and politics intermix, and where all people can coexist with harmony, justice, and equality," says Caldwell.

Poetry for the People: The June Jordan Experience will run from March 18 to March 27 at the Anacostia Arts Center Black Box, with preview performances on March 16 - 17. IN Series and Theater Alliance intend to produce Ceiling/Sky in the fall, if the circumstances of the pandemic allow.

One of the most widely-published and highly-acclaimed Jamaican American writers of her generation, poet, playwright and essayist June Jordan was known for her fierce commitment to human rights and political activism. Over a career that produced 27 volumes of poems, essays, libretti, and work for children, Jordan engaged the fundamental struggles of her era: for civil rights, women's rights, and sexual freedom. A prolific writer across genres, Jordan's poetry is known for its immediacy and accessibility as well as its interest in identity and the representation of personal, lived experience-her poetry is often deeply autobiographical. Jordan's work also frequently imagines a radical, globalized notion of solidarity amongst the world's marginalized and oppressed.

Jordan uses conversational, often vernacular English to address topics ranging from family, bisexuality, political oppression, racial identity and racial inequality, and memory. Regarded as one of the key figures in the mid-century American social, political and artistic milieu, Jordan also taught at many of the country's most prestigious universities including Yale, State University of New York-Stony Brook, and the University of California-Berkeley, where she founded Poetry for the People. Her honors and awards included fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Massachusetts Council on the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts, a Rockefeller Foundation grant, and the National Association of Black Journalists Award. She is the author of the libretto for I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky, which will be co-produced by IN Series and Theater Alliance next season.

Learn more at www.theateralliance.com.

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