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Carl Hancock Rux

CARL HANCOCK RUX

  (1971 - )
Nationality:    African American
email:    Click here to contact     Website:    Click here

Literary Agent:    Victoria Sanders & Associates, LLC

Carl Hancock Rux, (b. March 24th, 1971, Harlem, New York) is an African American poet, playwright, novelist, recording artist, and essayist who crosses and fuses disciplines in his art. His writing and spoken word performances incorporate the rhythyms of rap, slam poetry and the oral traditions of slavery, while being grounded in the classical Western canon.He is the author of the Village Voice Literary prize winning collection of poetry, Pagan Operetta the novel Asphalt and the OBIE award winning play Talk. Rux is also a resident artist at the Miami Performing Arts Center, the Robert E. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College and Head of the Writing for Performance MFA program at California Institute of the Arts. He is a recipient of numerous awards including the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts Prize, and the Bessie Schomburg Award, the Village Voice Literary Prize, Fresh Poet Award, National Endowment for the Arts/Theater Communication Group Playwright in Residence fellowship, NEA Leadership Initiatives Meet the Composer Grant, the Kitchen Theater Artist Award, Rockefeller Map grant, Creative Capital Artist grANT (Artist Initiative/Artist Support/Addt'l support), New York Foundation for the Arts Gregory Millard fellowship, NYFA Prize, Herb Alpert Award in the Arts (CalArts), Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX) 10 Arts & Artists in Progress Award. Rux's plays include Song of Sad Young Men, Chapter & Verse, Singing In the Womb of Angels, Smoke, Lilies & Jade, and the ObieŠ award winning playTalk, which premiered at the Joseph Papp Public Theater in New York, directed by Marion McClinton and starring Anthony Mackie (of "She Hate Me"). Mycenaean (BAM/Next Wave festival), Macandal (Carnival Performing Arts Center), the Blackamoor Angel (Richard E. Fischer Center). Rux is the Head of the Writing for performance Department at the California Institute for the Arts.

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below is a list of Carl Hancock Rux's plays - click on a Play Title for more information

         Blackamoor Angel, The         Chapter & Verse         Geneva Cottrell, Waiting for the Dog to Die         Makandal         Mycenaean         No Black Male Show         Smoke, Lilies & Jade         Song of Sad Young Men         Steel Hammer         Talk         Yanga

Blackamoor Angel, The

Synopsis:
tells the story of Angelo Soliman, an African in 18th-century Vienna and a friend of Mozart, via the performance of a Weimar-era traveling circus. the opera probes the secrets of the Moor's relationship to Mozart, his involvement in Mozart's final operas (Monostatos, in the Magic Flute, was based on Soliman), his mysterious death, and the reason for the heinous postmortem display of his body in the imperial Naturalienkabinett.

Notes:
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1st Produced:
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Organisations:
Robert E. Fischer Center for Performing Arts

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Chapter & Verse

Synopsis:
Religion oppresses storefront church in search of spirituality.

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Geneva Cottrell, Waiting for the Dog to Die

Synopsis:
With the help of an imaginary art critic, visual artist tries to capture accurate portrayal of mentally disturbed mother.

Notes:
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1st Produced:
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Organisations:
Mabou Mines

1st Published:
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Music:
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Makandal

Synopsis:
Haiti's first slave revolt interlocks contemporary stories of two Cuban Americans returning to Havanna; and would be Dominican refugees escaping from oppression into a new world.

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1st Produced:
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Organisations:
Carnival Performing Arts Center

1st Published:
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Music:
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Mycenaean

Synopsis:
BAM's 2006 Next Wave Festival presents Mycenaean, a new multi-disciplinary work written and directed by Carl Hancock Rux. the following description is from the show's press release: "Rux has adapted Mycenaean from the texts of his recent novel Asphalt and his epic poem, "Mycenaean Born." the piece was also inspired by French poet/playwright Jean Racine's retelling of the Hippolytus myth. Through video installation, movement, song, and electronic composition, Mycenaean's characters are pulled into a vortex of apocryphal urbanity-both ancient and contemporary-forcing them to examine their historical memory and will to survive. Rux parallels two kingdoms: one felled in its third century, the other a loosely contemporary civilization on the verge of a third world war. He sets the piece in a fictional American city called Fulcrum, where citizens complain of sleeplessness and visions of the ruined Greek city, Mycenae. When digital recordings of their testimonies of ancient, alternative identities and Dorian wars are viewed on screen, images both antiquated and contemporary are revealed. these 'Fulcrum Dreamers,' widely exposed in the media, are rumored to be political subversives-or possibly insane-as the nation tries to decipher the coded language and messages of Mycenaean dreams."

Notes:
video Jaco van Schalkwyk And Pablo Molina

1st Produced:
Bam Harvey Theatre    2006

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Genre:
multi-disciplinary work Piece

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No Black Male Show

Synopsis:
Black male intellectual, two women and mixed race drummer in museum of personal identity.

Notes:
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1st Produced:

Organisations:
Foundry Theater

1st Published:
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Music:
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Smoke, Lilies & Jade

Synopsis:
Gay Black writer Richard Bruce Nugent revisits race, sex and gender during Harlem Renaissance.

Notes:
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1st Produced:
Joseph Papp Public Theater    -

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Music:
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Song of Sad Young Men

Synopsis:
Demolition threatens once famous jazz club in poor Black community during AIDS crisis.

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Steel Hammer

Synopsis:
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Notes:
by Kia Corthron, Will Power, Carl Hancock Rux and Regina Taylor

1st Produced:
Humana Festival    2015

Organisations:
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1st Published:
Playscripts, Inc. in the book Humana Festival 2014: The Complete Plays.    -

Music:
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Talk

Synopsis:
In the age of McCarthy and the Beats, a controversial African American artist, Archer Aymes, became an overnight sensation following the publication of his first novel: Mother and Son, only to be found dead in a prison cell ten years later. Decades later, an academic conference is formed to debate the importance of Aymes' life.

Notes:
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1st Produced:
Joseph Papp Public Theater    09 Apr 2002

Organisations:
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1st Published:
TCG,    -

Music:
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Genre:
Drama

Parts:
Male:  4            Female:  2            Other:  -

Further Reference:
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Yanga

Synopsis:
Crossing centuries, escaped African slave (Yanga), indigenous mistress of Cortes (Dona Maria), first Bishop of Chiapas (Bartolome de las Casas) come to being as academic delivers lecture exploring the conflicts of colonialism during the Spanish conquest of Mexico.

Notes:
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1st Produced:
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Organisations:
Tribeca Performing Arts Center

1st Published:
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Music:
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