Open mike storytelling competition sponsored by The Moth, the NYC-based nonprofit that also produces a weekly public radio show. Ten storytellers are selected at random to tell a 3-5 minute story–this month’s themes are “Delusions” (Feb. 5) & “Flight” (Feb 19)–judged by a 3-person team recruited from the audience. Monthly winners compete in a semiannual Grand Slam. Seating limited, so arrive early.
7:30-9 p.m. (doors open and sign-up begins at 6 p.m.), Greyline, 100 N. Ashley. General admission tickets $10 in advance only at themoth.org beginning a week before each event. 764-5118.
Every Wed. Members read and discuss poems around themes TBA. Followed by collaborative writing games and exercises. Attendees invited to read their poems. Snacks & socializing.
8-10 p.m., Argus Farm Stop greenhouse, 325 W. Liberty. $5 suggested donation. onepausepoetry.org, 707-1284.
Bénédicte Boisseron (Afro-American and African studies) and Aliyah Khan(English, Afro-American and African studies) discuss Boisseron’s new book Afro-Dog, which investigates the relationship between race and the animal in the history and culture of the Americas and the black Atlantic, exposing a hegemonic system that compulsively links and opposes blackness and animality to measure the value of life.
Join us for an in conversation event featuring award winning author Dr. Randal Jelks, where he will discuss his most recent work, Faith and Struggle in the Lives of Four African Americans: Ethel Waters, Mary Lou Williams, Eldridge Cleaver and Muhammad Ali. His book explores the faith stories of four African Americans: Ethel Waters, Mary Lou Williams, Eldridge Cleaver, and Muhammad Ali. Dr. Jelks will be available after the event for a book signing.
About the Book
In 1964, Muhammad Ali said of his decision to join the Nation of Islam: “I know where I’m going and I know the truth and I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be what I want to be.”
This sentiment, the brash assertion of individual freedom, informs and empowers each of the four personalities profiled in this book. Randal Maurice Jelks shows that to understand the black American experience beyond the larger narratives of enslavement, emancipation, and Black Lives Matter, we need to hear the individual stories. Drawing on his own experiences growing up as a religious African American, he shows that the inner history of black Americans in the 20th century is a story worthy of telling.
This book explores the faith stories of four African Americans: Ethel Waters, Mary Lou Williams, Eldridge Cleaver, and Muhammad Ali. It examines their autobiographical writings, interviews, speeches, letters, and memorable performances to understand how each of these figures used religious faith publicly to reconcile deep personal struggles, voice their concerns for human dignity, and reinvent their public image. For them, liberation was not simply defined by material or legal wellbeing, but by a spiritual search for community and personal wholeness.
About the Author
Randal Maurice Jelks is Professor of African and African American Studies and American Studies. He holds courtesy appointments in History, Religious Studies, and is the co-Editor of the journal American Studies. Jelks is a graduate of the University of Michigan (BA in History), McCormick Theological Seminary (Masters of Divinity) and Michigan State University (Ph.D. in Comparative Black Histories). Jelks is also clergy person in thePresbyterian Church (USA). He is the author of the two award winning books African Americans in the Furniture City: The Struggle for Civil Rights Struggle in Grand Rapids (The University of Illinois Press, 2006), which was awarded the 2006 State History Award, University and Commercial Press, Historical Society of Michigan andBenjamin Elijah Mays, Schoolmaster of the Movement: A Biography (University of North Carolina Press 2012), awarded the 2013 Lillian Smith Book Award and the 2013 Literary Award, Black Caucus of the American Library Association. His forthcoming book is titled Faith and Struggle in the Lives of Four African Americans: Ethel Waters, Mary Lou Williams, Eldridge Cleaver and Muhammad Ali (Bloomsbury January 2019). Currently Jelks is writing a new book titled My Friends Call Me Benny: The Benjamin Mays Story for Young Readers. In addition serving as an executive producer of a two-part biographical documentary I, Too, Sing America: Langston Hughes Unfurled. Jelks has been a fellow at the National Humanities Center in Research Park Triangle, North Carolina and has held a Fulbright Distinguished Chair in American Studies at Masaryk University, Brno Czech Republic (2015), has been a Visiting Lecturer at University of Regensburg (2014), Regensburg, Germany and taught at the University of Ghana, Institute for African Studies (2001 and 2007)
Feb. 11, 12, 18, 19, & 21.
U-M students, nominated by their instructors, read their poems and short stories. Today includes RC writing student Jazzaray James. Light refreshments.
7-8:30 p.m., U-M Shapiro Undergrad Library Lobby, 919 South University. Free. 764-7493.
Win one of David Opdyke’s Michigan postcards! Come to the event and you’ll automatically be entered to win one of 10 vintage Michigan postcards painted on/modified by David Opdyke. Must be present to win.
Anishinaabe Theatre Exchange artists will be in residence at the University of Michigan campus from February 16-23, 2019, culminating in two performances of the new play by Carolyn Dunn, Three Sisters. The Anishinaabe Theatre Exchange uses theatre to activate networks with Native communities in the Great Lakes region. The group is a consortium of people from various backgrounds working to promote dialogue about Indigenous culture and issues.
In this brand new tragicomedy by Carolyn Dunn, three sisters, long estranged from family, community, and one another, return home to the Tunica-Biloxi Reservation lands in Louisiana at the behest of their dying aunt as she makes preparations for her final journey home. Family tensions, simmering secrets, death and grieving all intersect with the loss of tradition, culture, spiritual formation, and love. Poet, playwright, and scholar Carolyn Dunn was born in Southern California and is of Cherokee, Muscogee Creek, Seminole, Cajun, French Creole, and Tunica-Biloxi descent. Her scholarly work focuses on American Indian women’s literature and American Indian identity, and her play The Frybread Queen was produced by the Montana Repertory Theater in Missoula, Montana, and Native Voices at the Autry in Los Angeles. Her collections of poetry include Outfoxing Coyote (2001) and Echolocation: Poems and Stories from Indian Country L.A. (2013).
Thursday, February 21 at 7:30pm (doors at 7pm)
Three Sisters
Light Box Detroit | 8641 Linwood St
Friday, February 22 at 7:30pm (doors at 7pm)
Three Sisters
East Quad Keene Theater | 701 E. University Ave. Ann Arbor
All events are free and open to the public. Visit www.lsa.umich.edu/world-performance for more info.
If you are a person with a disability who requires an accommodation to participate in this event, please contact Center for World Performance Studies, at 734-936-2777, at least one week in advance of this event. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the University to arrange.
This residency is co-sponsored by the U-M Residential College, CEW+, Institute for Research on Women & Gender, SMTD Department of Theatre & Drama, Institute for Humanities, SMTD Office of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion and Department of American Culture.
Feb. 14, 16, 22, & 23 (different programs). U-M students and faculty perform staged readings of works by this acclaimed English playwright in honor of her 80th birthday. Tonight: Top Girls (7 p.m.), the groundbreaking 1982 indictment of Thatcherism and the idea that women’s professional success hinges on their mimicry of “masculine” behavior. Following the female head of a London employment agency, the play underlines the social and emotional costs women pay to move up the corporate ladder. Also, 1994 play The Skriker (9 p.m.), a 90-minute hallucinogenic fairy tale about a shapeshifting, doom-wreaking fairy who befriends, manipulates, seduces, and entraps 2 teen moms, one pregnant and one who’s killed her own baby.
7 & 9 p.m., U-M Walgreen Drama Center Newman Studio, 1226 Murfin. Free. 764-5350
Join us for a talk and signing with Arjun Alva. Arjun is a 6th Grader at Forsythe Middle School here in Ann Arbor. Arjun has always loved writing. It took him around 6 months to write “Adventures of Jimmy Hailbuster”. He is presently writing his second book.
Feb. 14, 16, 22, & 23 (different programs). U-M students and faculty perform staged readings of works by this acclaimed English playwright in honor of her 80th birthday. Today: the 2017 play Escaped Alone (3 p.m.),a brisk 55-minute surrealist set piece in which 4 British women share tea in a tranquil garden and discuss the end of the world. Also: The 1979 play Cloud Nine (7 p.m.), a racy, merrily merciless spoof of the moral pretensions of imperial Britain. Set in colonial Africa in 1880, the first act is a nonstop flurry of sexual liaisons involving a British functionary, his wife, his son and daughter, an explorer, a woman dressed in a riding habit, and an all-knowing black servant. The second act is set in 1980s London (though the characters have aged a mere 25 years) and blends farce and pathos in a surprising denouement. The 2009 play Seven Jewish Children (10:30 p.m.) is a 10-minute drama where 7 unnamed characters discuss how to teach their children about complex events in Jewish history, from the Holocaust to the creation of Israel to violence in Gaza. Also today, U-M theater studies professor Leigh Woods gives a lecture on “Caryl Churchill at 80” (5 p.m.) at Mendelssohn Theatre.
Various times, U-M Walgreen Drama Center Newman Studio, 1226 Murfin. Free.. 764-5350
