Live Art (TDM 161) Open Seminar with Joshua Gelb & Nehemiah Luckett

In this Open Seminar, theater-makers Nehemiah Luckett and Joshua William Gelb discuss their recent production The Jazz Singer, a theatrical response to the 1927 film of the same name, which was historically significant for its integration of synchronized sound, but is also remembered for its controversial use of blackface. The film tells the story of a “jazz crooner” forced to choose between his immigrant Jewish heritage and his aspirations to become a Broadway star. Gelb and Luckett’s musical rendering offers a contemporary take on this distinctly U.S. American story, asking whether escape from the specter of blackface is possible. This session will invite conversation around the questions: who tells whose stories? How do American racial and ethnic identities impact the ways in which art is created and understood? Who speaks to us from the past, and how are we to interpret what they say?

ABOUT JOSHUA GELB

Joshua William Gelb is a director, performer, and librettist whose work runs the gamut from devised physical theater, to stylized adaptations of classics, to original musicals as well as collaborations with emerging playwrights. With an eye for the highly theatrical verging on the cinematic, Gelb’s direction has been known to feature striking integrations of music, movement, clowning, and dance. Recent projects include a re-imagining of America’s supposed first musical The Black Crook at Abrons Arts Center, about which he recently lectured at Harvard University's Houghton Library. His adaptation of Kafka's A Hunger Artist, developed with Sinking Ship Productions, was part of the Tank's Flint and Tinder series and has since travelled to the Edinburgh Fringe and continues to tour. Other productions include Bear Slayer (Ars Nova), Party in the USA (Incubator Arts Project/Edinburgh Fringe), Clara Not Clara: A Nutcracker (Minnesota Dance Theater / Knockdown Center / LMCC Process Space), Sometimes in Prague (Ice Factory / Joe's Pub / Polyphone Festival), Love My Band (Dixon Place), Dukus (Target Margin Lab), and Blind Alley Guy (Incubator Arts Project). The album of his pirate musical Hail Oblivion is currently available on Bandcamp. He is a frequent contributor to Little Theater at Dixon Place, and has directed several successfully returning #Serials at The Flea. With Room5001 Theater, Gelb conceived and directed the notoriously revisionist all-male Man of La Mancha. Gelb received his BFA at NYU Tisch’s Playwrights Horizons Theater School and his MFA in directing at Carnegie Mellon's School of Drama where he graduated as a John Wells Fellow. He has assisted Marianne Weems (The Builders Association) and Rebecca Taichman (Soho Rep), is a member of the 2012 Lincoln Center Directors Lab, and an associate artist with Sinking Ship Productions.

ABOUT NEHEMIAH LUCKETT

Nehemiah Luckett is the Composer in Residence / Assistant Director of Music at Asbury United Methodist Church in Tuckahoe, NY. Music Direction Credits – Off-Off Broadway: Dial N for Negress (Asst. Music Director). Sarah Lawrence College: Company, Man of No Importance, Bat Boy, Promenade, and Urinetown. Asbury Summer Theater: Cyrano. As a composer, he has written both sacred and secular choral music, chamber music and theater music. His full length music Brick by Brick (Book and Lyrics by Ross Wade) was produced at Sarah Lawrence College in April 2007.  Mr. Luckett serves as the Music Director/Composer for Private Ear Audio Theater. He is the Director/Conductor of Res Miranda and has served as the Assistant Director of the SLC Chamber Choir.