from lala land to the yay area

Yet, another shameless self plug. If you are in the LA area, I would like to invite you to a dope open mic venue called Tuesday Nights Cafe. Yours truly is going to attempt to the realm of spoken word (yep, you heard right. 20 mins of new shit. brand spakin' new pieces. "what the fuck do you think you are doing?" you may say. i shall answer "i have no idea but come see. should be fun.) aaaaaaand, playwright and roomie, melinda corazon foley is featuring as well. aaaaaaaaaand umar rasheed aka frohawk two-feathers (see previous blog) will live paint. not enough? well what about my the homies i went to college with, room to improv. dude, just go okay?With that said, on with the story...


so melinda ante'ed up from being a spoke word artist to taking her art into theater. she wrote her second script and it got accepted to the Hip Hop Theater Festival in San Francisco. so this meant.... ROAD TRIP!!! george, one of the actors, and mark, the director rolled up with us.



we headed out early in the afternoon. i managed to pack lightly. well, sorta. to me, that was light. one overnight, a big purse, backpack and digital video camera? yea, that is light. anyways, we headed out to north hollywood to pick up the boys. (side note: at some random north hollywood residential street, we bumped into nyc's ewok one. hella random. he was out here to work and he just grabbed food and was headed back to the crib where he was staying at."

once we picked up the boys, we headed up north...




we climbed into george's hybrid civic. (yea, bitch! HYBRID!) according to the news, we were going to go thru a storm. i said a prayer for safe travels and instead, we got a beautiful view of the central cali. the hills resembled sleeping lions to mark.





we entered the bay bridge at about 10pm. at the lobby of the hotel, was a poster of the hip hop theater festival. it was a nice greeting. we dropped off our stuff and decided to go out for drinks.






of course, i couldn't NOT check my emails. that is the internet station in the lobby. to the right, cut off, was alex from the hip hop theater committee.


in the morning, george,melinda, and i headed out for breakfast and last minute errands before rehearsals. we ended at this dope spot in the castro district called baghdad cafe. amaaaaazing cajun catfish breakfast and their soy lattes are on point.



so we get to the brava theater and started rehearsals. holy shit. we only had two hours of rehearsal time. and what sucked is that some of the actors didn't get the script till that day. so basically, some people we cold reading. rehearsal we slightly tense but whatever. i had fun.


afterwards, we took a break and walked a few blocks to george's favorite taqueria. it used to be the same spot he went as a child. we could have went to any other place but the majority of the cast decided to kick it together and share the nostalgia







(by the way,its hella fucking early in the morning right now. i apologize for anything incoherentness. whoa, i think i made up a term.)

ok, so at 840pm we did the reading. let's fast forward. there were good parts and there were bad parts.mainly an audience of heckling highschool students who we have called "the peanut gallery." my thing is this, sure you want to expose the youth to theater, but with out the proper workshopping and introduction by their facilitators, these kids won't know the proper etiquette to fully listen and enjoy the performance. and with melinda's script covering adult issues such as debt, sex, sexual harrassment, violence, these kids didn't know how to handle it. they were giggling at every cuss word. it was completely unexpected. i have worked with youth but this was a rowdy bunch.

after the show, we decided that we had enough immaturity that we decided to hang out doing adult stuff. mark and george slept early cuz the wanted to leave early early in the morning. oh man.






i dunno what happened here but someone's boob got touched accidently.












the ride home was bittersweet. i wasn't ready to leave yet but i always know the bay will always be there. jill scott, pat benetar, and angie stone.. sweet... bitter- justin timberlake. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!!!! hasn't been leland texting me to keep me busy, i would have gone nuts!!!