Sights & Sounds is your weekly guide to the Bay Area arts scene. Artist Karen Seneferu, founder and co-curator of the exhibit and movement-building platform The Black Woman is God told KALW’s Jen Chien about three spectacular arts events happening around the Bay this week.
- Lower Bottom Playaz performance of Protection Shields at the Flight Deck in Oakland 9/21 through 10/6
- Saul Williams at the Grand Lake Theater 9/26
- For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf at the Atrium Theater through 9/29
Protection Shields: The Prequel to the Magical Adventures of WolfHawkJaguaris a theater production from the Lower Bottom Playaz in Oakland. Under founding director Ayodele Nzinga, the Lower Bottom Playaz’ mission is to “foster the creation, production, and presentation of quality theater in the tradition of the Black Arts continuum." Protection Shields is showing at The Flight Deck in Oakland opening September 21 and running through October 6.
“There’s something about Oakland that has portals of creativity and politics that intersect in ways that I don’t see any other place.”
Spoken word artist Saul Williams will be performing at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland next Wednesday, September 26, to help kick off the 7th annual Matatu festival of stories. Matatu is an artist collective out of Oakland inspired by its namesake, the colorfully-decorated independent public transport buses in Kenya. The festival is an arthouse experience rooted in local community and global diasporas.
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enufis a production being put on by the African American Shakespeare Company and happening this weekend at the Atrium Theater in San Francisco. It's directed by Elizabeth Carter and is based on Ntozake Shange’s original award-winning 1974 theater piece. Performances will be going on through September 29.
“The challenge of this play is to look at the ways that women aren’t always able to move beyond and push beyond the obstacles and they need sisterhood in order to make that happen.”
Artist Karen Seneferu is the founder and co-curator of the exhibition and movement platform The Black Woman is God: Assembly of Gods. You can check out The Black Woman is God in San Francisco at the SOMArts Cultural Centerthrough the end of this month.