JACK to Present Hicks & Brathwaite's 690 WISHES IN CONCERT

JACK presents 690 wishes in concert by Justin Hicks and The HawtPlates with Charlotte Brathwaite, running November 1 - 3, 2017.

"690 wishes in concert" is an evening of song rooted in a developing project by the musical trio The HawtPlates (Justin Hicks, Kenita Miller Hicks, Jade Hicks) with co-creator and director Charlotte Brathwaite.

The project features a cycle of vocal meditations on ownership and the American dream set in a single house under numerous households, inspired by Toni Morrison's novel Home, and the experimental writing of French author Georges Perec.

The music speaks with voices from a myriad of lifetimes in an urban dwelling - a fragmented libretto of ancient songs, shifting murmurs, calls, shouts, stomps and whispers. Studies of characters from children's stories like "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" and an episode of The Twilight Zone unpack the subtle radicalized under-breath utterances of a community in flux - the inherited language and layered vocabularies of gentrification and conversations on progress.

Created and composed by The HawtPlates (Justin Hicks, Jade Hicks, Kenita R. Miller), 690 wishes in concert is co-created with and directed by Charlotte Brathwaite and performed by The HawtPlates (Justin Hicks, Jade Hicks, Kenita Miller).

Performances are Wednesday, Nov. 1 at 8 pm, Thursday, Nov. 2 at 8 pm and Friday, Nov. 3 at 8 pm at JACK, located at 505 ½ Waverly Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11238 (C or G train to Clinton-Washington). Tickets are $15 (in advance at www.jackny.org or cash only at the door).

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

The HawtPlates make vocal performance works by breaking down and reconstituting vernacular musical forms such as blues, roots, hip hop, r&b, gospel, and punk. In their work, there is a sense that the music is specific to them as a "family band". Employing highly improvisational means, as well as their own sagacious formulas, their intention is to concoct curatives to the symptoms and traumas of working class citizenship in the modern world. While aiming to provide "sustenance" through song, their work appears as what one might call Diaspora cuisine - potent tonics and "one pots" hearkening the spirit of the family heirloom recipe. Their piece The Odetta Project: Waterboy and the Mighty World was featured during JACK's Freedom Songs Festival: Which Side Are You On, Friend? (JACK, 2015).

Justin Hicks (composer, vocalist) explores various themes such as identity, economics, marriage, labor, and religion in compositions and performances that range from singer/songwriter-style presentations to interdisciplinary and collaborative works involving movement and set design. His work has been featured at numerous institutions and festivals including Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Baryshnikov Arts Center, PS 122, The Japan Society, The Juilliard School, The Knitting Factory, JACK, Arlene's Grocery, Bowery Arts and Science, Invisible Dog, Culture Station Seoul 284, MoMA, NURTUREart, Dixon Place, and festival steirischer Herbst in Graz, Austria. He was a member of Kara Walker's 6-8 Months Space and was a performer and sound designer for The Geneva Project by choreographer Jennifer Newman (JACK, 2016), as well as the Obie Award-winning (Abigail DeVille, design) production of Prophetika: An Oratorio by Charlotte Brathwaite. He was also a performer and sound designer for Kaneza Schaal's Go Forth, and a contributing songwriter and performer for Meshell Ndegeocello's Can I Get A Witness? (Harlem Stage 2017). Justin has composed and designed sound for numerous visual artists including Cauleen Smith, Shane Aslan Seltzer, Hank Willis Thomas, and Chris Myers. His collaborative art practice with conceptual artist Steffani Jemison, Mikrokosmos, has deployed performances internationally and is currently on view at the Western Front Society in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Jade Hicks (composer, vocalist) is a songwriter and performer who has worked in several spheres of music and theatre. She has toured internationally with the Broadway show Rent, and with Queen Esther Marrow and The Harlem Gospels Singers. She was a featured vocalist in visual artist Steffani Jemison's Promise Machine (MoMA 2015), and has worked closely with Justin on various sound design projects as a vocalist and editor. Jade is the co-composer of House or Home, and her vocals are currently featured in Cauleen Smith's video piece Triangle Trilogy, which is on view at TPW in Toronto, Ontario.

Kenita R. Miller (vocalist) is a Drama Desk Award-winning actor/singer (Working 59E59 Theatre, 2012) who has performed on Broadway and Off-Broadway in productions such as the original The Color Purple (Celie, Nettie), Xanadu, Lincoln Center's production of Arhens and Flaherty's Dessa Rose and Ragtime (Lincoln Center), and The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin. She won an AUDELCO Award for her portrayal of Zora Neale Hurston in Urban Stages' production of Langston in Harlem. Kenita has appeared in many regional theatre productions across the country including Cincinnati Playhouse's production of The Revolutionists by Lauren Gunderson, originating role of "Marianne Angelle" (2016). Kenita will appear as Mama Euralie in the Broadway revival of Arhens' and Flaherty's Once On This Island this coming season.

Stage Director Charlotte Brathwaite is known for staging classical and unconventional texts, dance, visual/performance art, multi-media, plays, site-specific and music events. Her work is seen in the Americas, Europe, the Caribbean and Asia and ranges in subject matter from the historical past to the distant future illuminating issues of race, sex, power and the complexities of the human condition. Named by Playbill as "one of the "up-and-coming women in theatre to watch", Brathwaite continues to create her own work and has ongoing collaborations with such noted artists as Peter Sellars, Meshell Ndegeochello, Justin Hicks and Abigail DeVille. Awards/citations include: Franky Award (CUNY Graduate Center), Princess Grace Award and Julian Milton Kaufman (Yale). MFA: Yale. Assistant Professor Theater Arts Massachusetts Institute of Technology. www.charlottebrathwaite.com

Since 2011, the collaboration between Justin Hicks and Charlotte Brathwaite, has generated original music performance works for institutions such as JACK, 651 Arts, La MaMa, PS122, Harlem Stage, The Contemporary (Baltimore), Joe's Pub, Labyrinth Theater, Under the Radar Festival, Wow Festival (San Diego), Contemporary Arts Center (Cincinnati), Labyrinth Theater, BRIC Brooklyn Museum and the Whitney. Together they have worked with notable artists such as Meshell Ndegeocello (The Gospel of James Baldwin), visual artist Abigail DeVille (Prophetika: an oratorio), choreographer Jennifer Harrison Newman (The Geneva Project), writer/performer Ayesha Jordan (Shasta Geaux Pop), as well as lighting designers Kent Barrett and Tuce Yasak among others. Critics have described these works as "a fierce tide of feeling - rage and despair, love and hope and exaltation... an almost indefinable work of music theater ..." (Can I get a Witness: The Gospel of James Baldwin, New York Times Critics' Pick) and "...conceptual yet viscerally powerful..." (Obie Award-winning Prophetika: an Oratorio, The Wall Street Journal). For more information look to www.charlottebrathwaite.com.

Developed in part through a Performance Space 122 Ramp 2017 residency with commissioning support from the Jerome Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

JACK is an OBIE-winning performance venue founded in 2012 in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn by theater-maker Alec Duffy and several co-founders. Our mission is to fuel experiments in art and activism, collaborating with adventurous artists and our neighbors to bring about a just and vibrant society. We present about 200 theater, music and dance performances a year and hold community forums on racial justice, gentrification, and police/community relations. In 2016, DeeArah Wright joined Duffy as Co-Director.

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