as•sem•bly |ə-sěm'blē| (noun)
1. a group of people gathered in one place for a common purpose.
2. a public facility to meet for open discussion.
3. the action of fitting together component parts of a machine or
other object.
4. a collective of artists dedicated to realizing a new American theater.
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YOUR BRAIN IS A BOMB:
A Revolutionary Conversation Series
The Assembly is dedicated to building community and fostering conversation with each of our works. As we bring HOME/SICK to Los Angeles, we invite you to join us for a series of conversations with former Weatherman, historians, and activists and artists engaged with today's political struggles.
The discussions will run approximately 20 minutes and take place immediately following performances of HOME/SICK.
John Malpede directs, performs and engineers multi-event arts projects that have theatrical, installation, public art and education components. In 1985 Malpede founded and continues to direct the Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD), the first performance group in the nation comprised primarily of homeless and formerly homeless people. LAPD creates performances that connect lived experience to the social forces that shape the lives and communities of people living in poverty. Malpede has produced projects working with communities throughout the US and in the UK, France, The Netherlands, Belgium and Bolivia.Malpede has received New York’s Dance Theater Workshop Bessie Creation Award, San Francisco Art Institute’s Adeline Kent Award, Durfee Sabbatical Grant, LA Theater Alliance Ovation Award, Individual artist fellowships from New York State Council on the Arts, NEA, California Arts Council, City of Los Angeles’ COLA fellowship, California Community Foundation’s Visual Artist Fellowship and numerous project grants.
Wednesday, June 15
JOHN MALPEDE
Eric Mann is a 48-year veteran in anti-war, labor, and environmental organizing (working extensively with Congress of Racial Equality, Students for a Democratic Society, and the United Auto Workers), graduate of Cornell University, author of seven books and two films on social movements and organizing theory, including Katrina’s Legacy: White Racism and Black Reconstruction in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast and his most recent book, Playbook for Progressives:16 Qualities of the Successful Organizer. In 2001 he was a delegate to the U.N. World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa where he participated in the protests against the U.S. government’s walk out. He returned to South Africa in 2002 as part of a Strategy Center delegation to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. He is co-host of "Voices from the Frontlines" radio show.
Thursday, June 16
ERIC MANN
Jon Wiener is a contributing editor to The Nation magazine and teaches 20th century US history at the University of California – Irvine. He sued the FBI for their files on John Lennon — the story is told in his book Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court before most of the outstanding issues were settled in 1997. Wiener’s other books include How We Forgot the Cold War: A Historical Journey across America, I Told You So: Gore Vidal Talks Politics–Interviews with Jon Wiener, Historians in Trouble and Professors, Politics and Pop. Wiener has hosted an afternoon drive-time interview show on KPFK since 1999.
Friday, June 17
JON WIENER
Sunday, June 19
MARK RUDD
Mark Rudd led the legendary occupation of five buildings at Columbia University in 1968, a dramatic act of protest against the university's support for the Vietnam War and its institutional racism. As chairman of the Columbia chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, Rudd went on to become a national symbol of student revolt. In 1969, he co-founded the Weathermen faction of SDS, which helped organize the notorious Days of Rage in Chicago. Rudd went underground in 1970 and eventually surrendered to the authorities in 1977. After serving a brief jail sentence, he moved to New Mexico where he became an instructor of mathematics at Central New Mexico Community College. In 2009, he published Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen.
Thursday, June 23
ANDY HORWITZ
&
ALISON FLEMINGER
Andy Horwitz is a critic, curator and creative producer with over twenty years of experience in the for-profit and not-for-profit creative sectors. He is the publisher of Culturebot.org, the web’s foremost thought-leading arts and culture magazine and is a 2014 recipient of the prestigious Creative Capital | Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant for his research project, Ephemeral Objects: Art Criticism for the Post-Material World. From 2011 – 2013 he curated and produced Manhattan’s free, outdoor, multidisciplinary arts festival, The River To River Festival and from from 2007-2009, he curated the PRELUDE Festival at the Martin E. Segal Theater Center at the Graduate Center at CUNY. His writing has been published on Nerve.com, Seattle’s The Stranger, Heeb Magazine and various anthologies.
Alison Fleminger is the founding Program Curator of The Performance Project @ University Settlement and the Artistic Director of The Play Tank Theater Ensemble. She has nearly twenty years of experience designing and implementing arts programming for organizations and artists of all ages. She has worked at The Kitchen, Abrons Arts Center, Manhattan Youth, and Project Reach Youth. She has directed more than 15 original productions with non-professional performers. Her work as a teaching artist for Arts Connection’s federal research project DELLTA (Developing English Language Literacy through the Arts) was featured on ABC News. While earning her Graduate Degree in Theater Education from NYU, she apprenticed at the CAT Youth Theater. Most recently she earned a Certificate of Organizational Design from The Empowerment Institute for Social Change.