Race Peace

RACE PEACE - Workshop Promo from Bruce France on Vimeo.

Race Peace

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A Project of Mondo Bizarro and M.U.G.A.B.E.E. under the mentorship of Junebug Productions and Roadside Theater ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

On the historic morning of November 5, 2008, the headline of the New York Times proclaimed “Racial Barrier Falls in Decisive Victory.”  By November 6, 2008, the Times’ headline had changed.  “A Time of Hope Marred by an Act of Horror” screamed the front page.  A mostly black congregation in Springfield, MA had awoken the day after Barack Obama’s election to discover with horror that their church had been burned down.  November 9, 2008, the cover of Louisiana’s Times Picayune: “The Klan Violently Reappears.”  A woman from Oklahoma had been murdered at a Ku Klux Klan initiation in a rural community outside of New Orleans.

Race Peace is a new project that seeks to explore the radical disconnect at the heart of a country that can in one week both elect its first black president and also bear host to a violent rally by the Ku Klux Klan. We attempt to reach back to the beginning—to the point where racial stereotypes first take root—through an innovative blend of multi-disciplinary performance techniques and town-hall style meetings. We believe that by peeling back our histories to arrive at those formative moments, we can create a space for intervention, a space for performance to step in and help participants to actively pursue solutions. Throughout, Mondo Bizarro and M.U.G.A.B.E.E. will work to illuminate the connections between these mundane, personal encounters and the large-scale stereotypes at work in national issues such as the Jena Six, racial profiling, “Barack the Magic Negro,” 2050 census predictions and the shooting of Sean Bell.