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<h1><font face="Trebuchet MS"><b>LONG WHARF THEATRE
</b></font></h1><br><br>
<br>
<h1><font face="Trebuchet MS"><b>ANNOUNCES </b></font></h1><br><br>
<br>
<h1><font face="Trebuchet MS"><b>NEW SUMMER POETRY
SERIES!</b></font></h1><br><br>
<font face="Trebuchet MS">MONDAY EVENINGS, AUGUST 8 - 29<br>
</font><font face="Trebuchet MS" size=2> <br>
Aug. 8: ELIZABETH THOMAS<br>
Aug. 15: RAVI SHANKAR<br>
Aug. 22: NGOMA<br>
Aug. 29: CHARLES RAFFERTY<br>
<b> <br>
July 28, 2005 / New Haven, CT –
</b></font><font face="Trebuchet MS">Artistic Director <b>Gordon
Edelstein </b>and Managing Director <b>Michael Stotts </b>are proud to
announce a new four-part series of poetry readings,<b><i> GHOSTLIGHT:
Poetry for a Dark Stage</i></b>, at <b>Long Wharf Theatre </b>in
August. <br>
</font><font face="Trebuchet MS" size=2><i>GHOSTLIGHT: Poetry for a Dark
Stage</i></font><font face="Trebuchet MS"> celebrates the region’s
leading poets and spoken word artists. Original work will be
presented every Monday evening in August by <b>Elizabeth Thomas</b> (Aug.
8), <b>Ravi Shankar</b> (Aug. 15), <b>Ngoma</b> (Aug. 22), and <b>Charles
Rafferty</b> (Aug. 29). Following a question and answer session
with the featured artist, the stage will be set for the audience to share
a favorite poem or original work in an open mic format. <br>
</font><font face="Trebuchet MS" size=2>Doors open at 7 p.m. with opening
performances beginning at 7:30 p.m. in Long Wharf Theatre’s rehearsal
hall, located above Stage II (222 Sargent Drive, off exit 46 on I-95).
General admission tickets are $5 and student tickets are $3 with
ID. There is plenty of free parking in our lot. For
directions and theatre information, please visit our website at
longwharf.org. Tickets can be purchased <b>at the door only</b> so
plan on arriving early to register for open mic and guarantee your
admission! <br>
<b><u><br>
ARTIST BIOS<br>
<br>
August 8: ELIZABETH THOMAS<br>
</u></b>Elizabeth Thomas is a published poet who designs and teaches
writing programs at schools and organizations throughout the U.S.
These programs promote literacy and the power of both written and spoken
word. An outstanding advocate of youth in the arts, she started
UpWords Poetry, an organization dedicated to promoting programs for young
writers. She is an organizer and coach of the CT National Youth
Poetry Slam team and hosts a website at
<a href="http://www.upwordspoetry.com. /" eudora="autourl">
www.upwordspoetry.com. </a> She will be joined this evening by some of
the young poets she has worked and traveled with.<br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=2> <br>
</font><font face="Trebuchet MS" size=2><b><u>August 15: RAVI
SHANKAR<br>
</u></b>Ravi Shankar is poet-in-residence at Central Connecticut State
University and the founding editor of the internationally acclaimed
online journal of the arts,
<a href="http://www.drunkenboat.com/" eudora="autourl">
www.drunkenboat.com</a>. His first book, <i>Instrumentality</i>, was
published by Cherry Grove in May 2004. His work has previously appeared
or is forthcoming in such places as The Paris Review, Poets &Writers,
Time Out New York, The New Hampshire Review, Blackbird, Gulf Coast, The
Massachusetts Review, Descant, LIT, Crowd, The Cortland Review,
Catamaran, Caketrain, Fourth River, 88: A Journal of Contemporary
American Poetry, The Paris/Atlantic, Ecopoetics, The Indiana Review, The
Electronic Book Review, Western Humanities Review, The Iowa Review,
Smartish Pace, and the AWP Writer’s Chronicle, among other publications,
including two anthologies of contemporary poetry. He has taught at Queens
College, University of New Haven, and Columbia University, where he
received his MFA in Poetry. He has read at such venues as The National
Arts Club, Columbia University, KGB, the Asia Society, Artspace,
University of Virginia, the St. Mark’s Poetry Project, and the Cornelia
Street Café, has held residencies from the MacDowell Colony, Ragdale, and
the Atlantic Center for the Arts, has served on panels at UCLA, Poet’s
House, South-by-Southwest Interactive/Film Festival, and the AWP
Conference in Baltimore and Vancouver, been a commentator for NPR, KKUP
and Wesleyan radio and been featured in the Hartford Courant, The Journal
Messenger and in the Shoreline Press, reviews poetry for the Contemporary
Poetry Review and is currently editing an anthology of South Asian, East
Asian, and Middle Eastern poetry. You can read an interview with him at:
<a href="http://jacketmagazine.com/16/dev-iv-shank.html" eudora="autourl">
http://jacketmagazine.com/16/dev-iv-shank.html</a>. As a youth, he was
once forced to conjure silken scarves from an empty hat as his father's,
Sam the Super's, magician's apprentice.<br>
<br>
<b><u>August 22: NGOMA<br>
</u></b>Ngoma is a performance poet, multi-instrumentalist,
singer/songwriter and paradigm shifter, who for over 30 years has used
culture as a tool to raise sociopolitical and spiritual consciousness
through work that encourages critical thought. A former member of
the Spirit House Movers and Players with Amiri Baraka and the
Contemporary Freedom Song Duo, Serious Bizness, Ngoma weaves poetry
and song that raises contradictions and searches for a solution for a
just and peaceful world. Ngoma was the Prop Slam winner of the 1997
National Poetry Slam Competition in Middletown, CT and was
published in African Voices Magazine, Long Shot Anthology, The Underwood
Review, Signifyin’ Harlem Review and 'Bum Rush the Page/Def Poetry Jam
Anthology. He was featured in the PBS Spoken Word Documentary,
"The Apro-Poets" with Allen Ginsberg. Ngoma has hosted
the slam at the Dr. Martin Luther King Festival of Social and
Environmental Justice Festival (Yale University-New Haven, CT) for the
past 9 years. His newest CD release, <i>Ngoma's Take Out (Smokin'
Spoken Word Cuisine w/Jazz-Funk-Fusion)</i> and his CD Movie Documentary
<i>Ngoma:Alive and In Your Face from NYC</i>, takes Jazz/Funk/Fusion and
the Spoken Word to the next level. His CDs <i>Didgitation: Solo
Didgeridoo Musik for Meditation</i> and <i>Ancient Future Meditational
Musik</i> are must haves for those interested in altered states of
consciousness. <br>
<br>
<b><u>August 29: CHARLES RAFFERTY<br>
</u></b>Charles Rafferty's book <i>The Man on the Tower</i> was published
by the University of Arkansas Press in 1995 after winning the Arkansas
Poetry Award, and <i>Where the Glories of April Lead</i> was published by
Mitki/Mitki Press in 2001. His latest book, <i>During the Beauty
Shortage</i>, has just been released by M2 Press. In addition, Charles
Rafferty’s poems have appeared in such journals as Massachusetts Review,
DoubleTake, TriQuarterly, The Southern Review, The Underwood Review,
Quarterly West, Washington Square, Connecticut River Review, Louisiana
Literature, The Laurel Review, Poetry East, and Connecticut Review, as
well as in <i>American Poetry: The Next Generation,</i> an anthology
published by Carnegie Mellon University Press. He has received the
Robinson Jeffers Tor House Prize for Poetry, the Brodine/Brodinsky Poetry
Prize, and a grant from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts. He
currently works as an editor for a technology consulting firm.<br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=2> <br>
</font><font face="Trebuchet MS" size=2><b><u>ABOUT THE THEATRE<br>
</u></b>LONG WHARF THEATRE (Gordon Edelstein, Artistic Director; Michael
Stotts, Managing Director), is recognized as a leader in American
theater, producing fresh and imaginative revivals of classics and modern
plays, rediscoveries of neglected works and a variety of world and
American premieres. More than 30 Long Wharf productions have
transferred virtually intact to Broadway or off-Broadway, some of which
include the Pulitzer Prize-winning plays <i>Wit</i> by Margaret Edson,
<i>The Shadow Box</i> by Michael Cristofer, and <i>The Gin Game</i> by
D.L. Coburn. Long Wharf has received New York Drama Critics Awards,
Obie Awards, the Margo Jefferson Award for Production of New Works, a
Special Citation from the Outer Critics Circle, and the Tony® Award for
Outstanding Regional Theatre. Long Wharf Theatre is dedicated to
cultivating audiences that reflect the state of Connecticut and the
diversity of its cities as well as its rural and suburban areas, and
serving as a forum for the examination of historical and current issues
through humanities programming.<br>
<br>
<a href="http://www.longwharf.org/">www.LongWharf.org</a><br>
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