TÉA ARTISTRY
BEING CHAKA
 
MAY 6-27 2023
3B Development Series | Archive Residency | Productions
IN RESIDENCE: April 4 – May 1, 2023
Written by
Tara Amber, Chuk Obasi, & Nalini Sharma
Directed by
Vieve Radha Price, & Chuk Obasi
Developed by
Chuk Obasi, Vieve Radha Price, Tara Amber, Nalini Sharma, & Talya Mar
BEING CHAKA is a coming-of-age story in which souls from two worlds struggle for self and group transcendence as they take the painful and possible redemptive journey through relationships and systems steeped in racism.
The cast includes Tara Amber, Joey Brenneman, Colin DePaula*, Annie Hartkemeyer*, LaWanda Hopkins*, Jae Jackson, Joy Kelly*, Amanda Marikar, Chuck Montgomery*, Kahiem Rivera, Miriam Tabb.
Stage managers: Leslie Huynh and Ricky Brown
Scenic Design & Costume Consultant: Nora Marlow Smith
*these Actors appearing courtesy of Actors’ Equity Association
TÉA Artistry is an experimental theatre initiative that creates and performs at the nexus of social justice, aesthetic discovery, and self-transcendence. By “experimental” they mean that TÉA artists are as dedicated to discovering how theatrical performance pieces can help improve the world as they are to achieving excellence in the theatrical pieces they create.
Over the past twelve years, TÉA Artists have devised eight original performance pieces treating some of the major pressure points in American culture: Muslim – non-Muslim relations post 9/11, community-police encounters in the context of retaliatory gun violence, veteran-civilian dynamics in the wake of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the personal and social dilemmas of polarized consciousness, and most recently, the inner conscious dynamics of race in America.
In creating this body of work, TÉA has developed a distinctive approach to theatrical creation that they call Insight Artistry. This method guides and directs TÉA artists to deepen their insight into the inner conscious connection between what and how they value and the decisions they make. TÉA has discovered that a theatrical exploration of this connection is not only aesthetically compelling, but as a practical matter, it is only when we foster genuine curiosity about this connection can the genuine possibility for change come about. For info visit https://www.tea-artistry.org.
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This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in Partnership with the City Council, New York State Council on the Arts, A.R.T./New York’s NYC Small Theatres Fund made possible with support from the Howard Gilman Foundation.