THINGS WENT HORRIBLY WRONG Gets First Staging At Avenue Blackbox Theatre

The Avenue Blackbox Theatre closes its successful inaugural season with its most ambitious production to date - "Things Went Horribly Wrong," on stage from April 25 to May 5. This first staging of the play, will break boundaries and initiate a new model for immersive theatre that engages community in transformative conversations and relationships. Through this bold new process, theater will be experienced as an enlivening contribution to social change.

"Things Went Horribly Wrong" is an original new play, by New York City based playwright Sarita Covington that explores female leadership and how best laid plans of restoring equity and justice often go astray. The nonlinear storytelling hops back and forth through time and space to find the commonalities and connections between Winnie Mandela in her prime as a freedom fighter against South Africa's apartheid and a 14 year old girl growing up in the low-income Lower East Side neighborhood of New York City. The play highlights themes regarding gun violence, police brutality, feminism and racism among other complicated issues.

The play has its first staging at The Avenue Blackbox Theatre in Rochester, New York April 25 to May 5. Go to website for dates and times - http://avenuetheatre.org.

The Avenue Blackbox Theatre is an arts space founded by Reenah Golden located at 780 Joseph Avenue in Rochester, New York, which is accessible, with free parking. Attending "Things Went Horribly Wrong" will be an immersive experience and, thus, seating will be limited to ~30 attendees at each performance. Tickets are $20 in advance, and $25 at the door. To purchase tickets, go to https://www.avenuetheatre.org.

In "Things Went Horribly Wrong" a gender neutral ethos was employed in casting the play, a standard practice of The Avenue Blackbox Theatre co-signed by playwright Sarita Covington. "It is important to foster safe and bold spaces for all genders to create with fluidity and freedom. Especially young people who are still figuring it out but are often judged and forcefully limited from this exploration. Cis and queer kids need these spaces," says Golden, from her perspective as the founder and artistic director of the space. "And as director it also gives me freedom from the same dated limitations."

"Things Went Horribly Wrong" is directed by Reenah Golden. The cast includes New York City based Equity actor Angela Polite, whose appearance is made possible through a special appearance contract with Actor's Equity Association. She is one of two actors double-cast as Winnie Mandela in the play. The other "Winnie" is Rochester based actor, Ashona Pulliam. The character Jerry is played by Anderson Allen. Benjamin is played by Chaz Bruz. Shay is played by N'Dia "Dread" Prout, Heidi is played by Jazzelle Bonilla, and Sam is played by Uzziah Jamaal Agapeo.

The creative team includes W. Michelle Harris (Digital Media Design), Toni Elderkin (Lighting Design), Miah Leslie (Styling), Gatekeeper Adrian (Styling), Janmae Gause (Avenue Fellow, Theatre Tech) and Rafael DeGuzman (Avenue Fellow, Visual Arts). The producers agreed to establish rigorous equitable practices in this new hybrid of professional and community theater where all of the actors and creative team will be paid for their work.

Each run of "Things Went Horribly Wrong" includes the play, followed by an art's viewing and Long Table conversation. The total run time for the immersive theatre experience is 2:45.

Aside from the focus of the installation, which is Covington's play "Things Went Horribly Wrong," Rachel DeGuzman is curating other artistic provocations for the groundbreaking event. These include a multifaceted visual arts installation in The Avenue Blackbox Gallery that features visual art by Yves B. Golden, Eli Reed, and W. Michelle Harris. As the audience views the art, they will hear what DeGuzman has dubbed Literary Oral Transitions or LOTs - poetry and short readings that serve as ubiquitous surround sound while the theatre is reset from the play to the Long Table for the second half of the installation. For the "Things Went Horribly Wrong" installation, DeGuzman is also curating the Long Table conversations, in collaboration with community partners, bringing the Long Table Conversation/Installation model she adapted and designed for her "At the Crossroads: Activating the Intersection of Art and Justice" - to the Avenue Blackbox Theatre.

The Playwright and Producer:

Sarita Covington is a multi-disciplinary artist/ activist from Harlem. She holds an MFA from the Yale School of Drama and is co-founder of Company Cypher, a hip-hop theatre arts organization. She co-founded ACRE (Artists Co-Creating Real Equity), an organizing body that works closely with grassroots community organizers the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond. She is a collaborating artist with social impact organization B3W Performance Group. Her work has received support from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the Open Meadows Foundation, The Puffin Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, SPARC (Seniors Partnering with Artists Citywide) and BAX (Brooklyn Arts Exchange). She has served on the Advisory council for The Field Leadership Fund and supported and coached Race Forward's Racial Equity in the Arts Innovation Lab. Sarita has taught and facilitated workshops among a variety of communities including the inmates at the Fishkill Correctional Facility and Yale. She is currently a resident artist with Su-Casa in the Bronx. This year her play Things Went Horribly Wrong will be produced in Rochester, NY in collaboration with the Avenue Black Box Theatre. She will also be performing in Keen Co.'s production of Surely, Goodness, and Mercy by Chisa Hutchinson in New York City this spring.

The Director, Artistic Director and Producer:

Reenah Golden has been using the power of performance and the Spoken Word publicly to affect social and political change and create new ways of thinking for over 15 years. She co-founder of Kuumba Consultants, an arts-in-education agency for artists of color that provides academic and cultural enrichment programs. Reenah is a founding member of International Critical Pedagogy & Transformative Leadership Congress, teaches, guest lectures, and has been invited to perform and present nationally and internationally. As producing actor, most proud of her years touring Nilaja Sun's, No Child provoking deep thought and critical dialogue with full houses from Rochester to Granada, Spain. Reenah's production work includes multi-disciplinary collaborations; the most recent of which, BirthWrite, a collaborative literary work with her women's writing collective We All Write received rave reviews at Rochester Fringe Festival on the Geva Theatre Center Fielding Stage. Her evolutionary production, Black Coffee; the Poets' café, incorporates a live studio audience workshop is a local favorite for its innovative marriage of art, history, improvisation and audience interaction.

The Long Table/Visual Art Exhibit Curator and Producer:

Rachel Y. DeGuzman is president and CEO of 21st Century Arts and ARTivist in Residence at Gallery Seventy Four. The focus of her work is decentering whiteness in arts/culture by centering the art, narratives & voices of people of color - especially women & marginalized LGBTQ+ communities. In fulfillment of that vision, she established "At the Crossroads: Activating the Intersection of Art and Justice" in October 2017 - which began with the collaborative ARTS POWER SYMPOSIUM and continues with a series of intersectional Long Tables and Installations. In late 2018, Rachel founded WOC?Art collaborative with 10 women of color creatives. DeGuzman is the founder, producer and host of UP CLOSE AND CULTURAL, a weekly radio show on WAYO 104.3 FM in Rochester. Her current work culminated from a traditional career in professional arts with the intent to produce work that is more rooted in both art and community - that values experimentation, innovation, creativity in all its forms, social justice, and equity. She is a fund and organizational development advisor to The Avenue Blackbox Theatre and serves on the Rochester Civil Rights Memorial Site and Rochester Museum Science Center's 2020 Inspiring Women committees.

The Backstory:

Rachel DeGuzman met Sarita Covington when she was a 2015/17 The Field Leadership Fund Fellow in New York City and Covington was an advisor. DeGuzman then joined Actors Co-creating Real Equity, an artist's/creative's centered anti-racism organization in New York City that Covington co-founded with Maria Bauman-Morales and Nathan Trice.

Fast forward to spring 2018 when Winnie Mandela died. DeGuzman was frustrated by the general lack of coverage about her passing as well as its negative tenor. She posted on Facebook that this meant she was going to offer a "pop-up" Long Table Conversation and Installation focused on Winnie Mandela. Sarita commented that "we need to talk" on the post. When they did, Covington said that she had written a play that was inspired by Winnie Mandela and this might be the time to revisit it.

Since DeGuzman did not have the resources to present the play at the "Winnie: A Long Table Conversation and Installation" in April 2018, live in Rochester, Covington recruited 2 other professional actors and DeGuzman Skyped in a table reading of the play to provoke the conversation at the Long Table in Gallery Seventy Four. Reenah Golden performed a poem at the Winnie event and was a conversation starter on the Long Table along with Covington and actor Angela Polite.

Reenah Golden opened The Avenue Blackbox Theatre last spring and as an enthusiastic supporter, DeGuzman shared information about it on social media. Intrigued, Covington became a follower on Facebook.

Last summer, Covington contacted DeGuzman and said she wanted to premiere "Things Went Horribly Wrong" and to do so at The Avenue Blackbox Theatre. And what happened after that is in the text above and will continue to evolve after the installation opens later this month and beyond.