Ahamefule J. Oluo

Unceded Twana land, Hood Canal, WA

The Things Around Us

World Premiere

Access notes: This performance includes lighting effects, haze, and loud volumes. Earplugs will be available.  

DESCRIPTION

The Things Around Us is a collection of seemingly unrelated stories and anecdotes that swirl and dance with a live musical score created through electronically looped and effected trumpet, clarinet, and everyday objects. Following their epic stage shows with autobiographical stories and large ensembles, Oluo inverts the formula with stories about other people, other places, and other times set to intimate solo soundscapes that seem to grow out of thin air—a reflection of, and a necessity caused by, the forced isolation of the pandemic. Darkly humorous, uplifting and bleak, deep and silly, this work is about trying and failing to find order in chaos.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Ahamefule J. Oluo (they/them) is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, writer, comedian, and creator of live performance. They were a founding member of the award-winning experimental jazz quartet Industrial Revelation and is a Mellon Foundation Creative Research Fellow, a Creative Capital awardee, an Artist Trust Arts Innovator awardee, and a semifinalist in NBC’s Stand Up for Diversity comedy competition. Oluo co-produced comedian Hari Kondabolu’s albums Waiting for 2042 and Mainstream American Comic for Kill Rock Stars, and the album Who the Hell is Dwayne Kennedy? by the eponymous standup legend. They have premiered two autobiographical, music-based performances at The Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival: Now I’m Fine, 2016, which was described by The New York Times theater critic Ben Brantley as “a New Orleans funeral march orchestrated by Arnold Schoenberg,” and by Time Out New York as "A day later, it's as though I grabbed a live wire; I can still feel the electricity in my skin;" and Susan, 2020, which Brantley called “virtuosic” and “crackerjack.” Oluo has written for television, including the stop motion animated comedy Santa Inc. on HBO Max, starring Sarah Silverman and Seth Rogen. Now I’m Fine was adapted into the feature film Thin Skin, which Oluo wrote, scored, and starred in. Thin Skin won Best Director at the 2020 Harlem Film Festival and is now available on streaming services. They have appeared on This American Life. Oluo has been commissioned, presented, invited, or supported by Under the Radar, On the Boards, PICA, Meany Center, Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, Seattle Theatre Group, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Intiman Theatre, REDCAT, MacDowell, Yaddo, Wa Na Wari, Langston, and more.