- By Kitchen Theatre
- Entertainment
Print 
ITHACA, NY: On September 29, 2006, the Kitchen Theatre Company’s ground breaking series, KITCHEN COUNTER CULTURE begins with I Reject These Labels. Written and performed by L.A.-based artist LeVan D. Hawkins, I Reject These Labels is a multimedia solo performance piece. It will run for only three performances: September 29 and 30 at 8pm and October 1 at 4pm.
The Los Angeles-based poet, performer and playwright LeVan D.Hawkins appeared at the Kitchen last season with Alexander Thomas performing the provocative and powerful Black Stuff. The two of them raised the roof and played to sold-out houses. Returning with season with his solo performance piece I Reject These Labels, Levan D. Hawkins brings his razor sharp words and dead-on observations to the Kitchen Theatre’s perfect intimate space for events like this. The LA Weekly called this piece “a stunning collage of performance, music, spoken word, and poetry…(that) explodes with the kind of soaring enlightenment that comes from painstakingly peeling away at the multilayered onion of truth.” I Reject These Labels is the first show in the Kitchen Counter Culture season, which this year features five artists of color.
LeVan D. Hawkins: “What would James Baldwin do?” is a question performance artist, poet and essayist LeVan D. Hawkins often asks himself. Hawkins has been reading Baldwin since he was ten years old - they share much in common: they were both raised in the church, both African-American, both gay, and both grew up in black neighborhoods: Baldwin in Harlem, Hawkins in the small all-black, mid-western town of Robbins, Illinois. ”I try not to be bound by one set of circumstances. I am interested in embracing ALL my human conditions. That is the true picture of me," says Hawkins. Hawkins attended the Art Institute of Chicago and graduating with a degree in theater. In Los Angeles, he has appeared at the UCLA Hammer Museum, Hudson Theater, UCLA Performance Club, Beyond Baroque Literary Center, and the World Stage at Leimert Park Village, but he can most often be found at the renowned Highways Performance Space, where he has been featured in several show and premiered two of his solo works, I Reject These Labels and In 30 Days. In 30 Days has also appeared at Sushi Performance and Visual Art in San Diego and at the Dixon Street Theater in New York City. His written work has appeared in such publications as the LA Times, LA Weekly. LA & SF Frontiers and the Sacramento News and Review. Black Stuff, a satirical look at issues of black male identity, was produced last October at the Kitchen Theatre. This August, Hawkins brought the show to the New York International Fringe Festival to great reviews.
Kitchen Theatre Company’s KITCHEN COUNTER CULTURE series brings Central New York the cutting-edge, outside-the-box, bold, uncensored work of writer/performers who are fearless in their convictions and daring in their presentations. The series celebrates new voices and diverse approaches to the act of performance with artists who are breaking rules and breaking new ground. This season the series highlights five artists of color. Coming up next in the series is.Los-Angeles based multimedia artist Dan Kwong with From Inner Worlds to Outer Space, followed by Tina Lee’s funny tale of family and cultures - My Mom Across America, then Trinidadian performance poet Roger Bonair-Agard with Masquerade: Poems of Calypso and Home. The series concludes with Peruvian actress Teresa Ralli’s performance, in Spanish, of José Watanabe’s adaptation of Sophocles’ Antigone. Funded by New York State Council on the Arts and sponsored by Foster Custom Kitchens.
Performance Dates:
September 29, 2006, Friday at 8:00 pm
September 30, 2006, Saturday at 8:00 pm
October 1, 2006, Sunday at 4:00 pm
----
v2i35