Creative Connections

TRASH MASH-UP IS FEATURED AT SAN FRANCISCO CARNAVAL 2011 GRAND PARADE

Trash Mash-Up’s (TMU) be featured in San Francisco Carnaval 2011 on Sunday, May 29 in the Streets of the Mission District.  Beginning at 9:30 a.m. at the corner of 24th and Bryant streets, the parade will proceed west to Mission Street. From there, the parade heads north on Mission down to 17th Street, where it will turn east and flow into the festival area.  TMU transforms the streets of San Francisco with a visual spectacle made of music, movement, and “Maskostumes”. Spectators enjoy works of art created from things disregarded by one person and then given new life through another’s imagination. With trash bag boas and bottle-cap chain mail, Trash Mash-Up builds creative connections and raises environmental awareness throughout our community as a new urban tradition is fostered.

One of the city’s most spectacular traditions, San Francisco Carnaval showcases the very best of Latin American and Caribbean cultures and traditions with a diverse array of food, music, dance and artistry. The event is free and the public is encouraged to attend.  Acting as this year’s Grand Marshal of the San Francisco Carnaval Grand Parade is famed actor, film director and political activist Danny Glover. The 2011 Grand Parade will feature a very special appearance of the San Francisco Giants’ 2010 World Series trophy accompanied by the Giants’ mascot Lou Seal.

Trash Mash-Up has partnered with community based organizations to create the colorful celebration mashing it up in the streets of the Mission District for San Francisco Carnaval.  They include the Whitney Young Performing Arts Dancers and the Abraham Lincoln High School Drama Club and Green Academy on SF Carnaval.  This is the second year that TMU, WYPA and ALHS have collaborated together with TMU for SF Carnaval.  Trash Mash-Up has also partnered with Recology for the third year on SF Carnaval. Recology is a private, 100% employee-owned resource recovery company based on the West Coast emphasizing recycling to reduce consumption of virgin materials who pioneered the first curbside compost program in the U.S.  TMU parades with Recology’s Drill Team and Artist In Residence Program.

Trash Mash-Up is a collaborative community art project. Using disposable materials, collected before they enter the waste stream, participants construct “Maskostumes” which are original pageant masks and costumes inspired by traditions from around the world. TMU enriches our community by developing creative connections amongst the participants in addition to raising awareness about cultural traditions and environmental issues. This project reduces waste and inspires people to see each other and our environment in a new way.

The founding members of Trash Mash-Up are a sister team, Bridget and Jessica McCracken, who both graduated from the Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre and San Francisco State University. Drawing from their talent for creating original theatrical productions and their commitment to serving the larger community, TMU is a socially and environmentally conscious art project. TMU shares cultural traditions with diverse communities in public performances and workshops. Reducing waste by using trash to make art, TMU reminds all of San Francisco that one person’s trash could become an entire city’s treasure.

Trash Mash-Up

Phone: 415-752-5537

Email: trashmashup@gmail.com

Website: http://www.trashmashup.org

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/trashmashup

Twitter:  http://twitter.com/TrashMashUp

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/trashmashup/

MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/trashmashup

blog:  http://trashmashup.blogspot.com/

listerv: http://groups.google.com/group/trashmashup

Mo`olelo Receives $30,000 Grant from The James Irvine Foundation

Funds will commission playwright Chantal Bilodeau to write a play on race, poverty and environment

Thursday, June 18, 2009 – San Diego, CA – Mo`olelo Performing Arts Company, San Diego’s community-focused, socially-conscious, Equity theater company, today announced The James Irvine Foundation has awarded the Company a $30,000 grant over two years to commission a new play by Chantal Bilodeau. This grant is made as part of the Irvine Foundation’s Creative Connections Fund, which was designed to reach small and midsize arts organizations pursuing a diversity of projects and ideas.

The funds will support the commissioning, work-shopping and development of an original script by Ms. Bilodeau that focuses on the contemporary debate over the Northwest Passage and the intersection of climate change, commercial opportunity and the survival of Inuit peoples native to the region. Through the play development process, Mo`olelo will engage San Diego’s Native American populations and environmental organizations to contribute to the evolution of the script through public readings and discussions.

Mo`olelo launched a greening initiative in 2007 to identify how theater can be created without damaging the long-term health of our communities and the environment. In addition, central to Mo`olelo’s mission is to select plays that focus on diverse communities and allow the Company to engage local, nontraditional theater audiences.

“Commissioning this play will provide an opportunity for Mo`olelo to draw the connection between issues of race, class and the environment,” said Seema Sueko, Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Mo`olelo. “This will allow us to support on stage, through content, the greening work we are doing backstage.”

The commission will launch in July 2009, with a first workshop and public reading of the script tentatively scheduled for June 2010. Revisions and adjustments will be made and a second workshop and public reading is scheduled for May 2011. The script is expected to be completed by June 2011.

Chantal Bilodeau is a playwright and translator originally from Montreal, Canada. Her plays include Pleasure & Pain (Magic Theatre; Foro La Gruta and Teatro La Capilla, Mexico City), The Motherline (Ohio University; University of Miami), Tagged (Ohio University; Alleyway Theatre), as well as several shorts that have been presented by Brass Tacks Theatre, City Theatre Company, The Met Theater, Philadelphia Dramatists, Raw Impressions, and Women’s Project. She has been a fellow in the Women’s Project Playwrights’ Lab, the Lark Playwrights Workshop and at the Dramatists Guild and has received grants from NYSCA, the Canada Council for the Arts, Stichting LIRA Fonds (The Netherlands), the Quebec Government House, Étant Donnés: The French-American Fund for the Performing Arts and Association Beaumarchais (France). Her translations include plays by Quebec playwrights Larry Tremblay and Catherine Léger, French-African playwright Koffi Kwahulé and Jean Cocteau. Current projects include the book for the musical The Quantum Fairies in collaboration with composer Lisa DeSpain and lyricist Mindi Dickstein and the translation of four more plays by Koffi Kwahulé.

The James Irvine Foundation is a private, nonprofit grantmaking foundation dedicated to expanding opportunity for the people of California to participate in a vibrant, successful and inclusive society. The Foundation’s grantmaking focuses on three program areas: Arts, California Democracy and Youth. Since 1937 the Foundation has provided over $1 billion in grants to more than 3,000 nonprofit organizations throughout California. With $1.4 billion in assets, the Foundation made grants of $78 million in 2008 for the people of California.

About Mo`olelo – Mo`olelo means story in Hawaiian. Selected as the inaugural Resident Theatre Company at La Jolla Playhouse, Mo`olelo Performing Arts Company is a socially-conscious theatre organization dedicated to broadening the scope of San Diego’s cultural environment by telling powerful stories that are as diverse as the islands of Hawaii, by paying Equity wages to local actors and developing environmentally-friendly theatre practices. A recipient of the Patté, San Diego Theatre Critics Circle, McDonald Playwriting and the Anti-Discrimination Awards, its mission is to create new works based on research within various communities, produce lesser-known works by master and contemporary playwrights, and educate youth. To learn more, visit www.moolelo.net or call 619-342-7395.

grant from The James Irvine Foundation « Mo`olelo Blog.