CNP PODCAST

Producer
Season 1: Episodes 1, 2, & 3

The CalArts Center for New Performance Podcast invites audiences to follow the artists who are expanding the language, discourse, and boundaries of contemporary performance. Each episode, visionary CNP artists lead us into creative dialogue, sharing how they are infusing their transformative work with the talent, vitality, and impulses of emerging artists in the CalArts community.

Episode 01: Daniel Alexander Jones

In January 2020, CalArts Center for New Performance’s 2020-21 Resident Artist Daniel Alexander Jones, met up with two next-generation artists and students at CalArts: performer / playwright Sarahjeen François and scenic designer / performance artist Amy Chiao.


A critically acclaimed playwright, essayist, performer and musician, Jones goes deep into Black American and Queer Performance traditions, exploring the power of Afromysticism and demonstrating an unwavering commitment to healing, compassionate truth-telling, and collective critical engagement.

LISTEN HERE

Episode 02: Ron Cephas Jones

The two-time Emmy Award-winner — and current CalArts faculty — Ron Cephas Jones speaks in-depth about his process as an actor. Jones shares his love of jazz, rhythm and language, and talks of nights at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, of the connections between Duke Ellington, William Shakespeare, August Wilson, and more.

Jones reveals his rigorous process of script analysis and answers questions that speak to an actor’s life and practice. As he addresses questions from the CalArts community — both pre- and mid-pandemic — Ron offers insight into the self-care, self-determination, and commitment of an artist whose accolades have never deterred him from continuing to seek, learn, and grow.

LISTEN HERE

Episode 03: Nataki Garrett and Andrea LeBlanc

Not long after Nataki Garrett began her tenure as artistic director of Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF), she and Andrea LeBlanc joined Awele Makeba to discuss CNP’s The Carolyn Bryant Project on the occasion of the work’s digital release in the fall of 2020. Directed by Garrett and co-created with LeBlanc—who also performs the role of Carolyn Bryant—the work conjures the specter of Emmett Till’s murder to create a nightmarish reverie on white violence and silence in America.

As they discuss the project’s creation, Garrett and LeBlanc share critical and personal reflections on a creative process that took shape in the Obama era through its most recent presentation following a summer of surgent Black Lives Matter protests.

LISTEN HERE