MEDIATHEK

Part theatrical event, part visual art installation, part ritual ceremony, Prophetika: an oratorio proposes a mythical cosmology of colliding reflections on freedom. Conceived by stage director Charlotte Brathwaite, it is a multidisciplinary sonically stimulating, visually spectacular original work drawing influence from the legacy of the African diasporatic experience. Inspired by Harriet Tubman’s journey from enslavement to liberation; the cosmic philosophies and improvisational style of Sun Ra; Alice Coltrane’s consciousness rising devotional music and the mysterious invading black monoliths in Stanley Kubrick’s classic sci-fi film 2001: Space Odyssey.

Described by the Wall Street Journal as “conceptual yet viscerally powerful” Prophetika is a theatrical response honoring life, struggle and liberation. Gestures of violence and aggression contrast images of beauty, wholeness and hope. Time and space are manipulated, molded and obscured. A ritual of life and death, birth and reincarnation is presented through a fractured lens, a theatrical kaleidoscope, using found ethnographic images and objects, suspended sculptures, whispering, chanting, haunting and celestial melodies, pre-recorded and live sounds, extreme darkness and light, poetry and dance.

Prophetika aims to open a dialogue with struggling voices that have been silenced. Powerful images of Blackness, prophetic and profane, beautiful and sensual battle out of the darkness into the light, out of the silence to be heard – Angela Davis, Marcus Garvey, Fanny Lou Hammer, Malcom X, Martin Luther King Jr., Yoruba prayers, Nina Simone, Frederick Douglas, June Jordan and Sun Ra are a few of the voices mysteriously collaged. Prophetika charts the journey of the rebel soul. It nurtures an expansive vision in a world narrowed by ‘isms’, sexism and racism.

Prophetika was presented in workshop at Snug Harbor Arts Center (2015) and The Blue Note Jazz Club (2015) before it premiered at La MaMa Theater in New York March 19 – April 19, 2015. The La MaMa production of Prophetika won a 2015 Obie Award for Best Design.

“She’s making theater for and with her generation, with visual and musical sensibility that is a stunningly multidimensional experience,” said director Peter Sellars of Charlotte Brathwaite. With support from Music Theater Now this timely and unique theatrical experience can reach a large and diverse audience.