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"If my work is non-linear it is because I have never inhabited linear
space. As an African-American male who came of age in foster care and a
hip-hop generation, my attraction to Greek mythology, the novels of Proust,
Baldwin, Gayl Jones, the poetry of Modernism, Post-modernism and negritude,
was an attempt to reach outside of myself in order to understand the geography
of my existence. The constructs of race, family and community were given
to me as preoccupations, which is to say I inherited a way of seeing that
I am still in the process of trying to disinherit. I’m invading my own privacy
and trying to write a theater—not a play—of pluralism, in which I can survive
emancipation. Writing is the only means of cultural resistance and cultural
acceptance I know."
Best known as a poet/novelist/alternative theatre performer, and recording artist, Carl Hancock Rux detonates the boundaries between contemporary and classical theatre, between theatre and performance poetry, and between jazz, dance and literature. He builds cities of illusion—born out of urban realities and mythological structures—in which anything is possible, and has collaborated with artists as diverse as Urban Bush Women and Jane Comfort. With language and musicality at the core of his aesthetic vision, he examines his own politics by shaking down the truth of the past. Rux’s incantatory work stirs currents deep below the surface and remains in the body of memory. |
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| 2002 |
Talk (commissioned
by the Foundry Theater), the Joseph Papp Public Theater, Theater X |
| 2001 |
Asphalt (dance/opera commissioned
by Jane Comfort & Co.) Ohio Theater, the Joyce Theater, Jacob’s Pillow |
| 2000 |
No Black Male Show; a Pagan Operetta;
the Kitchen, Joseph Papp Public Theater (Joe’s Pub), Portland Institute
for The Arts, Center Stage, Duke University, Penumbra Theater |
| 2000 |
Geneva Cottrell, Waiting for
the Dog to Die, 42nd St. Collective, Pink Inc., Penumbra Theater |
| 1998 |
Yanga (commissioned by Anita Gonzalez
for Bandanna Women) Tribeca Performing Arts Center |
| 1997 |
Languid Libretto For Womyn In The Bush
(commissioned by Jawole Zollar for Urban Bush Women) |
| 1996 |
Shelter (commissioned by the Alvin Ailey
American Dance Theater) |
| 1995 |
Kick The Boot, Raise The Dust and Fly; A
Recipe for Buckin'; Family Portraits (commissioned by Marlies Yearby's
Movin' Spirits Dance Theater), Tribeca Performing Arts Center, St. Marks
Dancespace, Performance Space 122, American Festival of Theater and Dance
(Creteil, France) |
| 1995 |
Pipe; A Courtroom Drama (commissioned
by Garland Farwell for the Jim Henson Puppet Festival), Ohio Theater, Dance
Theater Workshop, Performance Space 122 |
| 1995 |
Singing in the Womb of Angels, Dixon
Place, Pink Inc., 42nd St. Collective |
| 1992 |
Chapter & Verse, Nuyorican Poets Café,
Actor’s Playhouse |
| 1992 |
Song of Sad Young Men (Producer's Club
Theater, National Black Theater Festival, Aaron Davis Hall) |
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| 2003 |
Talk (play) TCG |
| 2003 |
Asphalt (novel) Atria/Simon & Schuster
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| 2003 |
Eminem; The New White Negro (essay)
in Everything but the Burden: What White People Are Taking from Black
Culture, Broadway Books/Random House |
| 2002 |
Geneva Cottrell, Waiting for The Dog to
Die (play) in Open City Literary Journal |
| 1998 |
Pagan Operetta (poetry & fiction) Fly
By Night/Autonomedia Press |
| 1996 |
Aunt Emma's Zuni Recipe for Soul Transition
(creative personal essay) in Soul: Black Power, Politics and Pleasure,
New York University Press |
| 1996 |
Asphalt (short fiction) in Go the
Way Your Blood Beats (African-American fiction), Henry Holt |
| 1995 |
Chapter and Verse (play) in Action:
the Nuyorican Poets Café Theater Festival, Touchstone/Simon & Schuster |
| 1994 |
(poems) in Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican
Poets Café, Henry Holt |
