From performing in the alleys of LA,Keith Antar Mason recounts his experience of getting on stage at the ICA in London with The Hittite Empire Performance Art Collective, an all-Black Intergenerational Men’s Cultural Elite.
The narrative of the London trip and snippets of the author’s experiences back in LA is effortlessly interwoven with visceral and evocative images from Black History, as memorised in his genes:
We are the nightsticked
Billyclubbed
Strangeways
Strangefruits
Survivors
Every summer is a Red Summer
Medusa’s Children is a one voice rant, a prose memoir, a wish poem.
He has performed with The Hittite Empire all over the United States and has taught and performed at Harvard University, Stanford University, UCLA and USC. His work has been performed at The Black Theatre Festivals at Winston, Salem. Atlanta, LIFT, ICA London and on Broadway at Alice Tully Hall, The Lincoln Centre.Keith Antar Mason conducts writing workshops in State Penitentiaries in California, Washington DC and NevadaHis New choreopoem, In The House of a Young Pharaoh, is being developed for Medium Production in LA in 2021.
And I know I can see in your eyesHow you form words in your mouthThe rainy daysThe hot humid summer nightsSomething BlackHasGotToDie(Author image is Keith Antar Mason as KAKRO(From Prometheus On A Black Landscape: The Core)Photo credit: Jose Ivey)
