Toshi Reagon Launches PARABLE PATH BOSTON - A Year Long Artist Residency At Emerson College

ArtsEmerson, the professional presenting and producing organization at Emerson College, is thrilled to announce that renowned musician, composer, producer, and activist Toshi Reagon is launching a new community engagement initiative on May 22, which she calls Parable Path Boston, based on the tenets of Octavia E. Butler's novel The Parable of the Sower. Reagon is Emerson College's current artist-in-resident through June 2021 funded by the Fresh Sound Foundation and the Doris Duke Foundation.

Anchored by the creative process and presentation of her work Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower, Reagon's residency creates a framework for community organizing through artistic engagement. Parable Path Boston will include community led activities surrounding the belief systems and interrelated social issues that impact climate justice and survival in Boston. During her time at ArtsEmerson she will work with a team of artists, cross-sector activists and nonprofit and municipal administrators to listen to and engage communities in efforts to bring greater visibility to the impending sociological outcomes of climate change and the need to increase our methods of survival.

Parable Path Boston will kick-off on Friday evening, May 22 with a one-night-only streaming event, the centerpiece of which is a full presentation of Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower: The Concert Experience, as part of ArtsEmerson's current digital programming and engagement initiative, Together Apart: Explore New Worlds from Your Home. Filmed in September 2015 at The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi, a developed version of that concert experience was presented at ArtsEmerson in March 2017. Reagon's fully realized staged production was originally scheduled as a part of ArtsEmerson's 2019/20 10th Anniversary season, but was postponed as part of the civic response to reduce the spread of COVID-19.

An adaptation of Octavia E. Butler's award-winning masterpiece, with music and lyrics composed by Toshi Reagon and Bernice Johnson Reagon, the opera version of Parable of the Sower brings together over 30 original musical anthems and requiems drawn from 200 years of black music to bring this Afrofuturist masterpiece to the stage while telling the story of a young woman who lives in a not-so-distant America where climate change has driven society to violence and the brink of extinction. When she loses both family and home, she ventures out into the unknown. What begins as a desperate fight for survival leads to something much more profound: a startling vision of human destiny that births the seeds of a new faith. A triumphant, mesmerizing theatrical work of rare power and beauty, Parable illuminates deep insights on gender, race and the future of human civilization.

"Wherever she goes, Toshi Reagon creates transformation in her audiences and in the communities where they live, and that makes ArtsEmerson a perfect fit for this ambitious residency," says ArtsEmerson Artistic Director David Dower. "And the focus of her work, which here will center on the visionary fiction of Octavia E. Butler, is so urgent and on time for Boston, for Emerson, and for ArtsEmerson that we are feeling doubly blessed to be able to spend this time together with her and the people she is gathering around us. Toshi's adaptation of Butler's novel is a teacher, a call to action, and boost for the soul in the way it points to pathways for thriving, not just surviving, beyond the sort of global calamity we're in the middle of right now. People will have a chance to get a sense of how powerful this show and this residency will be when we kick it off with this May 22nd concert and conversation. We are proud to be her Boston home and grateful to Doris Duke and Fresh Sound, and to NYU Abu Dhabi, for making this all possible."

Toshi Reagon states clearly and directly, "My idea was that this work would gather folks interested in not having a diabolical existence on earth." She continues, "It would serve as a belly button where a multitude of collaborations and events would circulate before and after. Because Octavia Butler lays out so clearly our contemporary issues anyone could participate. I see theaters as potential holders of mass meeting in the position of churches during the Southern freedom movement of the 60's. I see theaters that are on college campuses as additional classroom spaces. ArtsEmerson has met me here in this vision with this residency."

"When talking about how we offer our creative space to a public, I think these questions of engagement get asked as an opportunity for systemic change and access," continues Reagon. "Maybe even healing. If you are a holder of space, you have the opportunity to walk outside of the doors of your space, and to house within your walls not just dynamic and interesting art from everywhere, but offer a feeding of the spirit and a restoration of the congregations that surround you. ArtsEmerson embodies this - and it's why I'm drawn to collaborate with them."

The May 22 event kicks off at 6:00pm, when Reagon engages in conversation with panelists who participated in Parable Path residencies in Durham, NC and St. Paul, MN -- two cities where Reagon previously paved the pathway with local artists and activists. Viewers will then be treated to a stream of the Concert Experience at 7:00pm followed by a talk-back with Toshi Reagon and other performers from the show at 8:30pm.

One of ArtsEmerson's primary strategies is to create long arcs of relationships with innovative theater companies and artists. Fresh Sound residencies at Emerson College are opportunities not only to develop new work, but to involve artists intimately with the Emerson community.

Parable Path Boston is Toshi Reagon's commitment to investigating the ideologies inside Octavia E. Butler's by putting them to work in real life and in real time - discovering and creating a pathway forward. Reagon has assembled a team that includes playwrights, fashion designers, dancers, poets and other artists and educators to help lead activities surrounding the belief systems and interrelated social issues that impact climate justice and survival in Boston.

One member of that team is Associate Professor in Marketing Communication at Emerson College, Nejem Raheem, who recently accepted the 2020 Helaine and Stanley Miller Award for Outstanding Teaching. "One reason I work at Emerson is that I hoped to reintegrate the performing arts into my work as an economist; Toshi's residency has allowed me to do just that," says Raheem. "This kind of partnership is rare in my field, and Toshi's openness to what I have to offer is incredibly rewarding. I hope this collaboration can show our students and our community the importance of moving across perceived barriers to improve our understanding of each other and to genuinely help the world."

Past events during Toshi's current residency have included a partnership with New Roots Church and The Boston Public Library for Parable Read, a city-wide read of Parable of the Sower promoting conversation about climate change, survival, and ways of deepening our humanity. In December 2019, Emerson College also hosted a live recording of the podcast How to Survive the End of the World, a show featuring sister hosts Autumn Brown and adrienne maree brown (Emergent Strategy), who interviewed Reagon.

To access any or all of the May 22 online events, please visit ParablePathBoston.com.

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