Arts & Entertainment
Bakesta King at the 2013 Oregon Shakespeare
Festival Hip Hop Open Mic. King stars in the
company’s current production of ‘The Comedy of
Errors,’ which is set during the Harlem Renaissance.
Photo by Jenny Graham, Oregon Shakespeare
Festival
T
he Oregon Shake-
speare Festival hosts
three free Hip-Hop
Poetry Open Mic events this
spring on March 10, April 7
and May 5, each from 7 to 9
p.m. at the Black Swan, 15
S. Pioneer St., Ashland.
Doors open at 6:30 p.m.;
space is limited.
In addition to inviting the
community onstage to share
their talents in poetry,
music, dance, and theater,
each night will highlight a
different featured artist: the
Q Brothers on March 10,
Samiya Bashir on April 7
and Los Porteños on May 5.
The first featured artists of
the three-event series are the
Q Brothers. Musicians,
actors, writers, educators,
and DJ’s, GQ and JQ creat-
ed and starred in the
award-winning, internation-
ally-acclaimed productions,
“Othello: The Remix” and
“Funk It Up About Nothin’”
— both musical, hip hop
“add-RAP-tations”
of
Shakespeare’s classics.
OSF has commissioned
the Q Brothers to create a
contemporary
language,
hip-hop version of “The
Two Gentlemen of Verona,”
a commission made possi-
ble by a grant from the Hitz
Foundation.
These events are open to
the community, providing
an opportunity to work on
original material in front of
live and deeply supportive
audiences. OSF has been
producing poetry slams and
open mics since 2007.
For more information go
to www.osfashland.org and
look on Facebook for Ore-
gon Shakespeare Festival
and Oregon Shakespeare
Festival Green Show.
PHOTO BY SUSAN FRIED
Shakespeare Hip Hop
Zola Mumford, curator at Langston
Hughes Performing Arts
Center, participates in Pecha Kucha
Night at the Northwest African American
Museum in Seattle, Feb. 27 on the topic
of Afrofuturism. The event featured
some of Seattle’s leading artists and
visionaries presenting their ideas using
the format of Pecha Kucha, a
presentation style that incorporates 20
slides for 20 seconds each (six minutes
and 40 seconds in total), keeping the
presentations brief and fast-paced.
Other guest speakers were Saheed
Adejumobi, Donald Byrd, Sandra
Jackson-Dumont, Charles Mudede,
Zola Mumford, Ahamefule J. Oluo,
Cristina Orbé, and Okanomodé
Soulchilde and Barbara Earl Thomas.
March 5, 2014 The Portland and Seattle Skanner Page 7