Misty Copeland's breaking ground

I know Misty Copeland has been getting a lot of press lately for her recent (well-deserved) promotion to American Ballet Theatre.  That's a big deal, a huge deal, but it's not what I'm going to talk about here. What I'm currently clasping my hands in delight over is the fact that Copeland is making her Broadway debut and performing in ON THE TOWN at the Lyric Theater.

It makes sense, really. ON THE TOWN is dance (indeed, ballet) heavy for a musical, and she's a delightful choice for the part. To be fair, she's not really a singer. But does she really need to do everything when she does what she does so very well? (For that matter, do any of us? Could we all just own what we're really good at, and be enough for once?)

But the truly magical thing for me here is that, as an artist, she has bravely thrown herself headlong into a milieu that is not her forte. She didn't say, "Eh, you know what, I'm not really a trained singer. I don't know if I can pull off a Broadway musical. I think I'll pass." What she said, and what she's saying every night that she's out there on that stage, is Yes; let's do this. She's knocking the ball out of the park for what she's there to do, widening her creative reach, and allowing herself to play.

Here's to all of us doing a little more of that.

the lion(ess) sleeps tonight

Rest in peace, Judith Malina.


Love and Politics - Official Trailer from Azad Jafarian on Vimeo.

Up Next: KING KIRBY

In case you missed the announcement on other forms of social media, my next project will be KING KIRBY as part of the Comic Book Theater Festival at The Brick in June. I am super stoked about it:

Husband-and-wife playwrighting team Fred Van Lente (award-winning, New York Times best selling comics writer of COWBOYS & ALIENS and ACTION PHILOSOPHERS!) and Crystal Skillman (NYIT Award-winning playwright of GEEK, CUT and THE VIGIL) combine their talents with director John Hurley (ACTION PHILOSOPHERS!, LICKSPITTLES, BUTTONHOLERS, AND DAMNED PERNICIOUS GO-BETWEENS and THE VIGIL) to produce the hysterical and heartbreaking story of this titanic figure – how he poured his quintessentially Twentieth Century life into his comics, and the fateful, tragic mistake he made that led the man to obscurity while his creations became known to every person on Earth.

Rehearsals kick off later this week. In the meantime, mark your calendars and check out the Kickstarter campaign!

adventures in non-narrative filmmaking

Jumped out of my comfort zone and took an experimental video workshop in the vein of Kurt Kren and Stan Brakhage over the weekend at Wave Hill. It's the first foray I've made into this sort of thing. There's a lot of room for improvement, obviously, but I was happy with it. Here's to continued experimentation.