The Exponential Festival and Kyoung's Pacific Beat to Offer Free, Peace-Driven Community Arts Events in Brooklyn this June

On Sunday, June 12th, from 12pm-3:30pm, Kyoung's Pacific Beat invokes a post-white supremacist world by inviting BIPOC healing artists, abolitionist organizers, and our community at large to engage in somatic healing exercises, our Black and Asian Book Club, and a free, outdoor screening of NERO at Hillel Plaza in Flatbush Junction, Brooklyn.

This BIPOC-centered, cultural organizing invites local audiences to partake in this event not as passive spectators, but as citizens invested in unpacking the intersections of state violence and the American Empire at a grass-roots level.

NERO is a Shakespearean, five-act "streamplay" theatricalizing the history from George W. Bush's War on Terror to our present day as the rise and fall of Nero's Roman Empire. Set in 64AD in Rome's Palace of the Frogs, this "state of the nation" tragicomedy invites Black, Indigenous and People of Color to examine how white male supremacy is the root of American Imperialism. NERO is a hybrid event that includes both a screening of this theatrical production and live, community-driven, cultural invocations of a post-white supremacist world.

"As a company based in Flatbush, Kyoung's Pacific Beat is honored to produce this cultural offering with the goal of de-escalating anti-Asian and anti-Black violence by building community cohesion through our artistic programming, political education sessions, and by practicing community-care," stated Kyoung H. Park, Artistic Director of Kyoung's Pacific Beat. "Our work, generously funded by the NYC Office for the Prevention of Hate-Crimes and private foundations, aims to increase cultural competence, awareness, and respect for our differences in order to cultivate positive relations among New Yorkers."

NERO is written and directed by Kyoung H. Park, with original music by Helen Yee, video design by Yoon Choi and Marie Yokoyama, costume design by Andrew Jordan, and features an ensemble of Black, Asian, Chicanx, Arab American and Muslim performers including Claudia Acosta, Veracity Butcher, Yadira De La Riva, Ariel Estrada, Dave Gelles, Daniel K. Isaac, Ash Mayers, Kaila Saunders, Imran Sheikh and Ishmael Thaahir.

As a complimentary community engagement program, we offer a Black and Asian Book Club which is co-moderated by Rohan Zhou-Lee (Founder, The Blasian March) and Stephanie Hsu (Board Co-Chair, Kyoung's Pacific Beat). This Book Club gathering examines how incarceration impacts Black and Asian communities through the memoirs of Patrisse Khan-Cullors (When They Call You a Terrorist) and George Takei (They Called Us Enemy).

In addition to our cultural programming, Kyoung's Pacific Beat will lead a mutual aid drive to provide pre-packaged food and personal hygiene products for local community members. Last year, Kyoung's Pacific Beat partnered with Downtown Brooklyn Partnership to provide over 140 pre-package food and personal hygiene products through a performance driven event at Albee Square in Downtown Brooklyn.

This is Kyoung's Pacific Beat's second, community-care driven, mutual-aid campaign organized in partnership with GAPIMNY - Empowering Queer & Trans APIs, The Blasian March, Asians4Abolition, Indie Space and The Exponential Festival.

NERO (Workshop Production) - Live Screening

Sunday, June 12th, 2022, 12pm-3:30pm EST
at Hillel Plaza - Flatbush Junction, Brooklyn
2, 5 trains to Flatbush Avenue
FREE
To RSVP and/or support our mutual aid campaign, please click here.

Kyoung's Pacific Beat (KPB) is a non-profit, peacemaking theater collective dedicated to working with artists, non-artists, and local communities to transform experiences of oppression into peace messages through public performance. KPB devises work with an interdisciplinary and multicultural ensembles of artists -our Mondragons- to uplift communities of color to create a culture of peace through non-violent practices that provide social cohesion, spiritual healing, and radical knowledge.

Kyoung's Pacific Beat is led by Kyoung H. Park, a North Korean playwright/director, born and raised in Santiago, Chile, currently living in unceded territory of the Lenape. As Artistic Director of Kyoung's Pacific Beat, he has devised three full-length plays - disOriented, TALA, and PILLOWTALK - and created over 35 community-based, experimental projects including performances for new media. His work centers stories of (im)migration, queerness, trauma and the ways these intersect in communities of color; it's described as "intensely personal" by American Theater Magazine and "very much of this moment" by the New York Times.

NERO's script was developed with the Ma-Yi Theater Company, Sol Project, New Ohio Theater's Producer's Club, supported by a 2019-2020 Dramatist Guild Fellowship and based on research conducted at the George W. Bush Presidential Archives in Dallas. NERO's workshop production was generously supported by the Brooklyn Arts Council, MAP Fund, Jerome Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, and Venturous Theater Fund.

To post a comment, you must register and login.