Archive: Arts & Entertainment

The Kitchen Theatre Company’s KITCHEN COUNTER CULTURE series, featuring cutting-edge, outside-the-box work by guest artists from around the country, continues this month with a new play by playwright Lenelle Moïse.  EXPATRIATE features two actors, Moïse and NYC-based actress Karla Mosley, and is directed by Tamilla Woodard.  It will run at the Kitchen Theatre for three performances only:  April 18, 19, and 20.  All performances will be followed by a talkback with the artists.

EXPATRIATE tells the story of Claudie and Alphine, African-American jazz singers and long-time sister-friends.  Disillusioned by grief, homophobia and “the black glass ceiling,” the two flee to Europe to realize their starved American dreams.  In Paris, their stars rise.   But Claudie and Alphine soon discover that for some black artists living abroad, stardom comes at a price.  Will their friendship survive the pressures of their newfound success?  This musical drama combines dialogue, dream sequences, dance, and live music in an exploration of race, friendship, addiction, art and infamy.

Haitian American playwright and performer Lenelle Moïse is a 2002 graduate of Ithaca College, where she created a Planned Studies major in Women and Storytelling. As an Ithaca College student, she wrote her first two plays, CORNERED IN THE DARK and PURPLE (commissioned by the Kitchen Theatre Company) and began work on a third, THE MANY FACES OF NIA.  Moïse went on to complete an MFA in Playwriting at Smith College. She has written ten plays and two screenplays, produced a spoken word CD, authored essays that appear in numerous published collections, and appeared as an actor on stage and screen.  In 2004, the Kitchen Theatre presented the premiere of her play WOMB-WORDS, THIRSTING, a work she describes as “a brew full of womanist Vodou jazz, queer theory, hip-hop, and movement.”  EXPATRIATE is her latest play; it will have a workshop production in April at The Culture Project in New York as part of their Women Center Stage 2008 programming.

 BIOS

Lenelle Moïse (Playwright / Performer):  Lenelle’s other plays include:  Matermorphosis, an adaptation of Kafka's "Metamorphosis" commissioned by Serious Play Theatre Ensemble; Little Griot, a youth play about masculinity commissioned by the Drama Studio; The Many Faces of Nia, a two-act comedy about stereotypes and Black-Jewish relations; Spilling Venus, Pandora's "coming out" story; Cornered in the Dark, a choreopoem about the psychological aftermath of sexual assault; and Purple, a youth play about dating violence commissioned by the Kitchen Theatre Company. Lenelle was also commissioned to contribute 25 poems & monologues to We Got Issues, a "performance-based dialogue" on young women & voting produced by Eve Ensler, Jane Fonda and the Next Wave of Women in Power. Lenelle earned her MFA in Playwriting from Smith College in 2004 and is a recipient of the 2003 & 2004 James Baldwin Memorial Award in Playwriting.

Moïse has written for film as well.  She co-wrote Sexual Dependency, Bolivian director Rodrigo Bellot's feature film debut about cross-cultural machismo and U.S. media influence on the youth of the global south. Currently out on DVD, the film won the International Film Critics' Award at the Locarno International Film Festival (Switzerland). It has since been screened and awarded in countless festivals and cinemas on four continents. Lenelle also wrote and starred in Mara Alper's short experimental video, To Erzulie, which premiered at the Berlin Sommerfest der Literaturen in July 2002.

Also a working actor, Lenelle won a Drammy  for her performance in the Insight Out Theatre Collective production of Cornered in the Dark. She has toured with Chrysalis Theatre Ensemble and Enchanted Circle Theatre and was most recently seen  off-Broadway at the Culture Project in the ensemble cast of Rebel Voices, a play based on the book Voices of a People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove.

Karla Mosley is a NYC-based actor.  Her TV credits include The Knights of Prosperity and the hit children's TV series Hi-5. She is a graduate with honors of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and has studied at the Roy Hart Voice Institute in France.  Theater credits include Dreamgirls (Theater Under the Stars, Houston, TX) and the children's off-Broadway production Max and Ruby (Theaterworks USA). Additionally, she has a bit part in the upcoming Coen Brothers film, Burn After Reading, to open in 2008, and will be seen in the indie horror film Red Hook.

Tamila Woodard (Director) has developed and directed four other solo performances pieces:  Sherry Boone’s Super Star Artist Show (Zipper Theatre) LeeAne’t Nobles KickN2theBeat (Zipper Theatre); Queen GodIs'  Birth of Power U (Triad Theatre/ Hip Hop Theatre Festival) and Carlos Andrés Gómez’s MAN UP (Solo Nova Festival @ PS 122 and Edinburgh Fringe, UK).  She directed the staged reading of Eve Ensler's Necessary Targets with Jane Fonda, Ellen Burstyn, Kerry Washington and Lynn Cohen at the Women, Power & Peace conference. Other directing credits include: Here.This.Now, which enjoyed a sold out workshop at Symphony Space in January ‘06 and premiered at the 10th New York International Fringe Festival in August ’06 to a sold out run; The Book of the Who (MCC’s Fresh Play Festival); and An Evening Honoring Toni Morrison (Lincoln Center Jazz featuring Sonia Sanchez, Phylicia Rashad, Morgan Freeman, Bill T. Jones and Sweet Honey in the Rock.).  Woodard also co-edited and directed We Got Issues (toured US 2007), a spoken word performance piece derived from the rants of 1,000 women on power and politics and compiled from the writings of “Def Poets” Staceyann Chin, Rha Goddess, Lenelle Moïse and others, and directed  Valiant (8th New York International Fringe Festival and subsequent runs, workshops and readings produced by The Culture Project/Impact Festival, Unofficial New York Yale Cabaret, Williamstown Theatre Festival and others), a documentary theatre piece chronicling the lives of women and war, adapted by Lanna Joffrey. Her productions have been awarded Best Performance, Best Ensemble and Best Of Listing in New York Magazine.  A graduate of the Yale School of Drama’s Acting Program, Woodard served as the Artistic Director of the Yale Cabaret.

Performance Dates:

April 18, 2008, Friday at 8:00 pm
April 19, 2008, Saturday at 8:00 pm
April 20, 2008, Sunday at 4:00 pm

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