Charlotte Street Foundation Hosts The Generative Performing Artist Awards Event 10/11

Charlotte Street Foundation is pleased to announce the 2010 Charlotte Street Generative Performing Artist Awards Event on Monday, October 11, 8pm at Johnson County Community College's Polsky Theatre, presented in collaboration with JCCC.

Free and open to the public, the 2010 Charlotte Street Generative Performing Artist Awards Event will include live performances featuring the work of composer/musician Brad Cox and actor/creator/writer/singer/songwriter/musician/teacher Stephanie Roberts, who received unrestricted cash awards of $6500 each from Charlotte Street Foundation earlier this year.

In his essay for the 2010 Charlotte Street Generative Performing Awards, Paul Rudy describes Brad Cox as "a maverick pianist, composer, performer, entertainer, and serious artist all wrapped into a humble, soft-spoken package that people want to dance and make music with." Further, he notes, "In the dictionary under 'collaboration' there is a picture of Cox...or at least there should be. To sit the stand with Brad and make music is to be integral in the short-term community of the gig, as well as the long-term community of Kansas City's leading edge music..."

Brad Cox's presentation for the 2010 Charlotte Street Generative Performing Artist Awards Event will feature new compositions, structured improvisations, and excerpts from a larger work, "I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Ice Cream" written originally for Owen/Cox Dance Group. Performing will be a nonet featuring Rich Wheeler (tenor saxophone), Matt Otto (tenor saxophone), Jeff Harshbarger (bass), Gerald Spaits (bass), Scotty McBee (drums), Kent Burnham (drums), Sam Wisman (percussion and samples), Patrick Alonzo Conway (percussion and baritone saxophone), and Brad Cox (rhodes).

Stephanie Roberts has been creating original ensemble theatre for more than 15 years. Having earned her MFA from the Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theater, she specializes in mask and red-nose clown traditions, but continues to push in new directions with each project as she allows content to inform the form. Her work is typically character-driven, informed by music, and embraces the poetic clown - flawed, ridiculous, fiercely determined, and desperately seeking love. "Stephanie is somewhat of a Renaissance spirit," writes Theodore Swetz in his essay for the Awards brochure. " She joyously lives the life of a storyteller. She sees the extraordinary in the ordinary. She plucks the poetic from the general. She believes that the power of the Theater is to transform both artist and audience, and because she 'sees' so deeply and differently than the rest of us, we are enriched by her creations."

Stephanie Roberts' presentation at Polsky Theatre will include a short segment of her one-woman film-noir mask play, The Mask of the Broken Heart, as well as a new theatrical clown piece devised by herself, Matt Weiss and fellow Dell'Arte grad, Gulshirin Dubash.
The October 11 performance will conclude with a collaborative piece involving both artists and several of their colleagues.

A color brochure is being produced in conjunction with the event, featuring images and essays about the artists by Paul Rudy, Rome Prize, Guggenheim, Fulbright and Wurlitzer Foundation Fellow and Professor of Composition at Kansas City's Conservatory at University of Missouri-Kansas City; and Theodore Swetz, a professional actor and director for close to 40 years, who serves as the head of acting for UMKC's professional actor training program and is the Patricia McIlrath Endowed Professor of Theater.
More about the Charlotte Street Generative Performing Artist Awards:
Launched in 2008, the Charlotte Street Generative Performing Artist Awards support and recognize artists creating outstanding, innovative, original work in the fields of dance, theater, music, experimental music performance, theater/performance art, and hybrid/interdisciplinary versions thereof. The awards seek to foster the continued creative and professional development of the selected artists, provide the means for them to further focus on and develop their work, and increase exposure for their accomplishments, as the CSF Visual Artist Awards have done since 1997. Through its Awards programs, CSF seeks to contribute to the vitality of Kansas City's art community and to enhance Kansas City's desirability as a place for artists to work and live. Since 1997, the Charlotte Street Foundation has now recognized 78 Kansas City based artists with unrestricted cash Charlotte Street Awards, with a total of $490,500 in unrestricted cash grants distributed directly to artists.

The recipients were selected based on the quality of their work and accomplishments to date, as well as promise for continued development as generative artists; relevance of their work in relation to local, regional and national contemporary art discourses and to the contemporary moment and culture in which we are living; and the potential for their work to "stand up" nationally, influence the field, and have lasting value.

The 2010 Generative Performing Awards Advisors responsible for selecting the recipients included David Ford, multi-disciplinary artist; Michael Joy, Director of Artists and Educational Programs, Kansas City Friends of Alvin Ailey; Joette Pelster, Executive Director, Coterie Theatre; Cynthia Rider, Managing Director, Kansas City Repertory Theatre; and Paul Rudy, Professor of Composition, UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance.

More about the 2010 Generative Performing Awards Fellows
Brad Cox received his Master of Arts in Music from the University of Missouri-Kansas City in 2001. He is co-founder, composer, arranger and musical director of Owen/Cox Dance Group, an ensemble of professional dancers and musicians dedicated to performing collaborative new works, whose recent projects include The Lewis and Carroll Expedition, Bottom of the Big Top, Presumed Lost, The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, The Christmas Story - A medieval Mystery Play, and The Golem. He is also composer, arranger and ensemble organizer of The People's Liberation Big Band of Greater Kansas City, which performs extensively, and whose recent projects include The Battleship Potemkin, an original score created for the classic Eisenstein film. For more, visit www.bradcoxmusic.com.

Stephanie Roberts received her Master of Fine Arts Degree in Ensemble Based Physical Theatre from Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theatre in Blue Lake, CA in 2006 and her BFA in Acting from Cornish School of the Arts, Seattle, WA in 1990. Currently Assistant Professor of Physical Theatre at University of Missouri, Kansas City, she has directed productions at UMKC including Slammed! (2010), and Meanwhile (2006); and has provided movement coaching/choreography for productions including The Cripple of Inishman, Nebraska Repertory Theatre; Under Midwestern Stars, Kansas City Repertory Theatre; and numerous productions at UMKC.
Roberts recently premiered her one-woman play, The Mask of The Broken Heart, at The Fishtank in Kansas City, and performs on an ongoing basis with Boom! An international Lost and Found Family Marching Band, a collaborative ensemble she founded that mixes genres both theatrical and musical. Solo performance projects include 60x60 Dance, Electronic Music Midwest Festival, Kansas City, KS; At the Beach, ByRD Productions; Party Girl, Annex Theatre, Seattle; and Threads, Bumbershoot Arts Festival, Seattle. Collaborative performance projects include Broke People's Baroque People's Theatre with My Barbarian at Urban Culture Project's la Esquina, produced by Grand Arts, and The Greatest Story Never Told and The Whisper, both at the Mad River Festival, Blue Lake, CA, the latter of which was awarded "Best of the Fest." Roberts is the recent recipient of an Inspiration Award from the Arts Council of Metropolitan Kansas City and is a former Urban Culture Project Performing Studio Resident.

Special thanks to Charlotte Street's 2010 Gold Awards Circle: Dallas + Scott Pioli, David Hughes, Sr., Margaret Silva; and 2010 Bronze Awards Circle: J. Scott Francis; Nancy + Rick Green; Julie + Mike Kirk, Susan + Jim Moore, Jeanne + Charlie Sosland, Meg + Bill Zahner - for their special individual support of our Visual + Generative Performing Artist Awards and Art Omi International Artist Residency.

For more about Charlotte Street Foundation, visit www.charlottestreet.org. For more about the Polsky Theatre at Johnson County Community College, visit http://www.jccc.edu/performing-arts-series/polsky-theatre.html

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