blood pudding

blood pudding Theatre School at DePaul

Produced by The Theatre School at DePaul University
Written & Directed by Sharon Bridgforth
7:30PM 10/26/10 – 10/30/10 , 2PM 10/31/10. Theatre Wit
Featuring: McKenzie Chinn, Celeste M. Cooper, Alex Hardaway, Cory Kahane, Ariel Rubin and Jamila Turner. Assistant Director: Robert Dieringer.
Choreographer: Ni’Ja Whitson. Composers: Alex Hardaway & Jamila Turner.
Vocal Consultant: Mankwe Ndosi
Stage Manager: Jean E. Compton. Assistant Stage Manager: Benjamin Ross.
Designers: Constance Lee, Tierra Novy, and Kaitlyn Myers.

If you would like to secure the right to perform blood pudding CONTACT ME.
The script is available to read in the NYC New Dramatists Library.

The Set:
A living altar, honoring Black & Indigenous people.

Setting:
New Orleans. Times: then and before.

Running Time
60 Minutes.

The Cast: 6
2W, 1M. Plus 3 Musician/Singer/Dancers.
Race, sexuality and gender should be queerly complicated.
All should sing and dance.

Make’n da pudding

I was able to work on re-writes during two Spring 2010 closed readings at New Dramatists
and during the 2010 Weston Playhouse Artists Retreat!

Laurie Carlos Directed blood pudding

My first attempt at blood pudding was in 1998. I received support from the New Forms Regional Initiative Grants Program (NFRIG), a program jointly funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation For The Visual Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts, administered by DiverseWorks and Mexic-Arte.

Pictured: Florinda Bryant, Zell Miller, 111, Stacy Robinson, Renita Martin, Djola Branner. Photo by Bret Brookshire

In the 1998 draft of the text, I identified blood pudding as an Oya piece. Oya is a Yoruba deity. She is the hurricane. She rules the grave yards. She is Wind. With my current excavation and deepening of the text, post Katrina, I intend blood pudding to Lift the Ancestors. To play wildly in it’s form/like Jazz. To ask: What do the Ancestors want to say? What are the untold stories in the soil, water and air? What does Oya demand of blood pudding today?

The performers were AMAZING/and Laurie directed the $#@! outta this piece. But then thats just how she do! MANN WE HAD SOOOO MUCH FUN…
Frontera @ Hyde Park Theatre in Austin, Texas, Vicky Boone, Artistic Director,
Produced blood pudding April 9, 1998
Written by: Sharon Bridgforth
Director: Laurie Carlos
Set Design: Leilah Stewart
Featuring: Djola Branner, Florinda Bryant, Renita Martin, Zell Miller, III, and Stacey Robinson.

Here Is The Text From The Above Clip:
my mam’ma is a downtown faucheaux,
her mam’ma earned freedom there
from a frenchman who liked his
berries
black.

in the book of coloured they had:
quadroon=1/4 Black rest white
octoroon=1/8 Black rest white
mulattoe=1/2 Black rest white
grif=1/2 Black 1/2 Indian
Creole=some Black some french/maybe spainard some Indian

and Black/which=what everybody really was.

my mam’ma creole/daddy grif
i be gombo.

mam’ma ran uptown when she almost grown
got herself a man as black as she could/didn’t want no=some-white baybays.

my ole Black daddy was Choctaw,
his mam’ma Bambara/got loose at
selln knock a man teef out drop
gerregerry in-kill quick/run
hide with they-from-here-first/neva
found name baybay to honor
Choctaw Black Bambara call he
Black for short
my daddy
move uptown from there.

play low down red light piano blues/in places red light don’t mean stop it mean come on in/my daddy
make that piano moan
make it holla to heaven
rock out of sight

my daddy taught me how to play

i was raised in honky tonks.
played piano befo my fingers could reach the keys
by the time my peepee-turned-ta-piss i had my own style:
alila mam’ma-alila daddy-some warrior-some slave
and the drum
making that piano ride the drum/what make
gombo. they call me docta gombo
i play the greatest review ever was-ever shall be,
got comics-sangers-shake dancers-snake charmers-dramatic
acts-female impersonators
and me
i close it off
for the best genius-talents of all time
“docta gombo and the all rights at the all nite inn”
you got to come by
got to come by see us/yeah.

*m’alle coupe canne, chere amie,
m’alle fait l’argent, mo tresor,
pou porter donne toi.
*(from a Louisiana Creole slave song
see”Africans in Colonial LA” gwendolyn midlo hall pg. 197,
translation: i will go cut cane, dear friend,
i will make money, beloved,
and bring it all to you)
copyright © 1998 Sharon Bridgforth

blood pudding promotional art by Daniel Alexander Jones.

Links Hall Workshop, 12/09

Funded by the National Performance Network Residency Program
Featuring: Misty DeBerry,
K. Bradford, Jano Layne, Erica Mott, Ni’Ja Whitson, and Nyx.
at Links Hall: 12/18/09 & 12/19/09 8PM.

On 12/20/09 7PM the performers presented excerpts of their own solo works – created during Walk With Me: a mentorship program that I facilitated during my residency at Links Hall.

My residency was part of a Links Hall – NPN Community Fund and Performance Residency Programs.