WATERBOY AND THE MIGHTY WORLD
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September 4 - 7, 2019
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WATERBOY AND THE MIGHTY WORLD » September 4 - 7, 2019 »
Created and performed by The HawtPlates (Justin Hicks, Kenita Miller and Jade Hicks)
Waterboy and the Mighty World examines the relationship between people of color and law enforcement in America. [Who is being policed? Who is being protected? Who and what kind of people are enforcing the laws of the land?] The performance reinterprets and remixes traditional songs made famous by Odetta Holmes - the voice of the civil rights movement - with original compositions that piece together the life of legendary Bass Reeves, the first African American US Marshal. The HawtPlates have created a musical landscape that borrows from Korean pansori, mantra, dirge, gospel music, and experimental R&B that invites us to reconsider our contemporary historical moment, and honors both the folk and political history of a too often neglected American songbook. Part live concert, part concept album - Waterboy is a testament to the power of the human voice lifted in praise and protest.
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The HawtPlates
Creators/Performers
More a performance trio than a band, The HawtPlates make conceptual live vocal works by breaking down folk and vernacular musical forms and reconstituting them into other modes of performance. In hearing their work, there is a sense that the music is specific to them as a family, and that it can only be made by them. While they maintain that it is “soul music” to that which they are true, they employ highly improvisational means, as well as their own sagacious formulas, to concoct curatives to the symptoms and traumas of being working class citizens in the modern world. By amassing a pantry of sights, ideals, persons, and places, they produce potent tonics and “one pots” hearkening the spirit of the family heirloom recipe.
Together and individually, The HawtPlates have served as muses of sorts to various artists such as Meshell Ndegeocello, Abigail DeVille, Kaneza Schaal, Charlotte Brathwaite, and have collaborated with the likes of Ahrens and Flaherty, Helga Davis, Cauleen Smith, Steffani Jemison, Reggie "Regg Roc" Gray and The D.R.E.A.M. Ring, Lynn Nottage, Queen Esther and The Harlem Gospel Singers, National Black Theater, The Guthrie Theater, The Public Theater, Performance Space New York, Bruce Weber, and The Park Avenue Armory to name a few.
Art Director Breck Omar Brunson, Lighting Designer Hao Bai, Sound Designer Andrew Lulling, Recording Engineer Ernie Indradat, Stage Manager Belynda Hardin, Writer Quincy Flowers, Dramaturg Sunder Ganglani, Production Assistant Stefania Bulbarella, Producer Jennifer Harrison Newman
This project is supported in part by a commission from The Bushwick Starr, and development included a residency at NACL (North American Cultural Laboratory) in Summer 2019 as part of a new long-term partnership with The Bushwick Starr.