BAR FOR BAR
Bar for Bar is a scripted oral history and anthology series of community testimonies, original spoken word, and hip hop performances spotlighting the social justice issues that profoundly affect the everyday lives of millennials. Featuring real stories from justice-impacted people, and some of today's celebrated and emerging poets, writers, performers, and hip-hop artists, this show is a series of themed 60-90-minute episodes curated and hosted by poet and performer Faylita Hicks. In the abolitionist movement, every campaign to change policy hinges on the ability of the organizer to effectively tell their story. As many talented Black and Latinx writers and performers are also justice impacted, this program will serve as the intersection for their passions, and a way for them to advocate as a community for changes to national and regional policies. Bar for Bar is a theatrical story-telling experience, much like Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls When the Rainbow is Enuf, in that each production will alternatively integrate movement, instrumentation, lighting, and other elements to heighten the audience’s emotional experience. Dynamic performances from a rotating cast of writers and vocalists will answer the question: What does it mean to be alive right now--and how do we redefine joy for ourselves?
After Party Logline:
In the summer of 2021, the fatal arrest of a popular sex worker in Austin’s historically Black eastside upturns the lives of everyone on her street in this poetic take on potential futures.
Summary:
Bad Bxtch is a club dancer whose walk home is interrupted by a local patrol team. After telling the officers she won’t be doing them any favors, things escalate and soon her name is a mantra everyone in the city mourns. Or is it? What if--what if there had never been a patrol team? What if--what if everyone lived at the end of the story? #Misdemeanors #Solicitation #CashBail
MEET THE ARTIST:
FAYLITA HICKS (she/her/they/them) is an activist, poet, essayist, and interdisciplinary artist born in Gardena, California, and raised in Central Texas. They are the former Editor-in-Chief of Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review and the author of HoodWitch (Acre Books, 2019), a finalist for the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Poetry, the 2019 Balcones Poetry Prize, and the 2019 Julie Suk Award. Their work has earned them awards, fellowships, and residencies from Catapult, Jack Jones Literary Arts, Lambda Literary, Palette Poetry, Tin House, and The Right of Return USA, the first and only fellowship exclusively for previously incarcerated artists, amongst others. Their work is anthologized in The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood and has been featured in Adroit, American Poetry Review, the Cincinnati Review, HuffPost, Kenyon Review, Longreads, Poetry Magazine, The Rumpus, Slate, Texas Observer, VIDA Review, and others. Hicks received an MFA in creative writing from Sierra Nevada University. www.FaylitaHicks.com