2016/17 RESOURCE GUIDE The Mayhem Poets

ONSTAGE

JERRY SH

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ABOUT OVERTURE CENTER

FOR THE ARTS

Overture Center for the Arts fills a city block in downtown Madison with world-class venues for the performing and visual arts. Made possible by an extraordinary gift from Madison businessman W. Jerome Frautschi, the center presents the highest-quality arts and entertainment programming in a wide variety of disciplines for diverse audiences. Offerings include performances by acclaimed classical, jazz, pop, and folk performers; touring Broadway musicals; quality children’s entertainment; and world-class ballet, modern and jazz dance. Overture Center’s extensive outreach and educational programs serve thousands of Madison-area residents annually, including youth, older adults, people with limited financial resources and people with disabilities. The center is also home to ten independent resident organizations.

RESIDENT ORGANIZATIONS

Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society Children's Theater of Madison

Forward Theater Company Kanopy Dance Company

Li Chiao-Ping Dance Company Madison Ballet

Madison Opera Madison Symphony Orchestra

Wisconsin Academy’s James Watrous Gallery Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra

Internationally renowned architect Cesar Pelli designed the center to provide the best possible environment for artists and audiences, as well as to complement Madison’s urban environment. Performance spaces range from the spectacular 2,250-seat Overture Hall to the casual and intimate Rotunda Stage. The renovated Capitol Theater seats approximately 1,110, and The Playhouse seats 350. In addition, three multi-purpose spaces provide flexible performance, meeting and rehearsal facilities. Overture Center also features several art exhibit spaces. Overture Galleries I, II and III display works by Dane County artists. The Playhouse Gallery features regional artists with an emphasis on collaborations with local organizations. The Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters’ Watrous Gallery displays works by Wisconsin artists, and the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art offers works by national and international artists.

RESOURCE GUIDE CREDITS

Executive Editor Writer/Designer

Alanna Medearis Jim Burling

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Dear Teachers,

In this resource guide you will find valuable information that will help you apply your academic goals to your students’ performance experience. We have included suggestions for activities which can help you prepare students to see this performance, ideas for follow-up activities, and additional resources you can access on the web. Along with these activities and resources, we’ve also included the applicable Wisconsin Academic Standards in order to help you align the experience with your curriculum requirements.

This Educator’s Resource Guide for this OnStage presentation of The Mayhem Poets is designed to:

• Extend the scholastic impact of the performance by providingdiscussion ideas, activities and further reading which promotelearning across the curriculum;

• Promote arts literacy by expanding students’ knowledge of music,science, storytelling and theatre;

• Illustrate that the arts are a legacy reflecting the values, custom,beliefs, expressions and reflections of a culture;

• Use the arts to teach about the cultures of other people and tocelebrate students’ own heritage through self-reflection;

• Maximize students’ enjoyment and appreciation of theperformance.

We hope this performance and the suggestions in this resource guide will provide you and your students opportunities to apply art learning in your curricula, expanding it in new and enriching ways.

Enjoy the Show!

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Arts

Table of Contents

About The Mayhem Poets ....................... 2

The History of Slam Poetry ....................... 3

Influences: Hip-hop History ......................4

Focus On: Arts Integration .......................6

Blackout Poetry/Hip-hop History............... 7

Books to Read ........................................9

Academic Standards .............................. 10

About Live Performance .........................11

Social Emotional Social Studies

Language Arts

Education Categories

Caption

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About The Mayhem PoetsThe Mayhem Poets are a group of young and energetic poets with a lot to say. The New Jersey-based slam poetry trio met while studying together at Rutgers University. Drawn together by their passion for word play and open mics, they comment on everything from literature and school to fast food. The Mayhem Poets offer timely, youthful, humorous, and hip spoken word poetry that reflects the thoughts, issues, and concerns of young people today. Their infectious, high-energy performance style is not only entertaining, but also engaging and inspirational.

Kyle Sutton has appeared as a Grand Slam finalist at the Nuyorican Poets Café in New York City. His smooth flowing, hardhitting hip-hop style and dynamic theatrical presence make him difficult not to connect with. With a B.A. in Spanish from Rutgers, Kyle can communicate

with a multitude of audiences and has led writing and performance workshops around the globe.

Scott Tarazevits has a writing IV attached to his psyche, thinks and drinks in rhyme, and has been known to “clang.” His unique brand of humor mixed with the acerbic wit of Weird Al wordplay bring substantial reaction to any crowd. Scott co-wrote and performed two acclaimed spoken word plays, Masque and New Street Poets, and was a 2005 Bowery Poetry Club Slam Finalist.

Mason Granger originally from Willingboro, NJ, is a former co-host of Verbal Mayhem, the longest running open mic show in New Jersey. His intelligent, yet accessible style has been called “pure, unmitigated genius” by himself, “ok, I guess” by others. Always mindful of keeping poetry fun, Mason seamlessly blends whimsy with social commentary in his spoken word work.

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Influences

The Mayhem Poets are influenced by rap and hip-hop music and artists, as well as other contemporary and traditional poets. Below is a brief intro to four important U.S. poets.

Walt Whitman, 1819–1892

Walt Whitman is arguably one of America’s most influential poets. He was born into a working class family in West Hills, Long Island, on May 31, 1819. During his childhood, the Whitman family moved around Brooklyn where he loved living close to the East River. As a child, this is where he rode the ferries back and forth to New York City, an experience that would remain significant in his life.

Maya Angelou, 1928–

One of the great voices of contemporary American literature, Dr. Maya Angelou is an acclaimed poet, educator, historian, author, actress, playwright, civil-rights activist, producer, and director. She captivates her audience lyrically with vigor, fire, and perception, and has the unique ability to shatter the boundaries of race and class.

Langston Hughes, 1902–1967

Langston Hughes was and remains one of the most popular writers of the Harlem Renaissance. He gave hopeful expression to the aspirations of the oppressed, even as he decried racism and injustice. His work continues to serve as a model for empathy and social commitment.

The History of Slam Poetry

Spoken-word poetry has been around for hundreds of years. Many of the poems that students still study in books began as performance pieces. William Shakespeare is probably the best-known performance poet, because all of his plays were written in verse and were meant to be performed. In fact, it was Shakespeare’s actors who finally wrote his plays down so that we can study them today. Without this effort, all of his great plays would have died on the stage, soon after they were performed.

Spoken-word also has strong roots in the West African griot tradition. The griot was a storyteller and historian who spoke or sung the history of his people, and was the basis of an oral tradition that is still alive today among Africans in their homeland, and in the Diaspora.

Slam poetry first saw its rise in Chicago in 1985 at a jazz club called the Green Mill where a construction worker named Marc Smith (a.k.a. Papi) structured a lyrical boxing match pitting poets one-on-one, to be judged by audience members chosen randomly, who scored the poets from 0-10. From there it caught fire in larger cities such as New York and San Francisco. In New York City, the Nuyorican Poet’s Café in the east village eventually became the Mecca of Performance Poetry (largely in part to the vision of its co-founders Miguel Algarin and Bob Holman). Spoken-word poetry as an art form often merges with theater, hip-hop, music, and even stand-up comedy as poets work to impress the crowd and win high scores from the judges. Poets sometimes wear costumes, incorporate songs or chants in their poetry, and can have a funny, serious, or political message.

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DJ Kool HercHip-hop is the voice of this generation. Even if you didn’t grow up in the Bronx in the ‘70s, hip-hop is there for you. It has become a powerful force. Hip-hop binds all of these people, all of these nationalities, all over the world together. (DJ Kool Herc, from the introduction of Can’t Stop Won’t Stop)

The origins of Hip-hop are often linked to the Jamaican DJ style of “toasting,” consisting of boastful commentaries, chants, half-sung rhymes, squeals, screams and rhymed storytelling. One of the earliest eamples of this is hip-hop’s founding father, Kool Herc, who would play the latest hits on a traveling sound system, adding his “toasts” to the beat of the music. You can listen to Kool Herc recall the early days of hip-hop in a 2005 NPR interview with Terry Gross: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4567450

Influences: Hip-hop HistoryThe South Bronx: The Birth of Hip-hop

Hip-hop rose almost literally out of the ashes and rubble of the Bronx, New York, which was burning and crumbling in the 1960s and 70s. With the building of the Cross-Bronx Expressway in the 1950s, the homes of more than 60,000 Bronx residents were bulldozed. The aim of the expressway was to shorten the commute time into Manhattan and aid in making it the center of commerce in New York. Thousands of Bronx residents were displaced. Many of the lower-middle-class white families moved to white-only suburbs like Levittown, Long Island. This phenomenon, known as white flight, left mostly African-American and Latino families to struggles in the urban decay created in the wake of the bulldozers.

More than 600,000 manufacturing jobs were lost in the South Bronx, and family incomes dropped to less than half of the national average. By the late 60s and early 70s, gangs and drugs ruled the streets of the South Bronx. Left with few economic or educational opportunities, young people turned to gangs for protection,and a sense of belonging and value. But the drive to be creative cannot be denied, even in the worst conditions. Young people in the Bronx started channeling their energy and creativity in new, more positive ways that provided an alternative to gang life.

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DJs, Disc Jockeys, or deejays

A recognizable element of what was later to be labeled hip-hop emerged as young people took to the streets of the South Bronx to create their own fun. Public parties in school gyms, parks, or on street corners became a common and much anticipated occurrence throughout the city. Loosely organized and modestly funded, early deejays like Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa and Grand Master Flash would simply tap into the electricity at the base of streetlights to power their equipment. Aside from just rocking the party, these deejays wanted to participate in creating a new sense of community in the Bronx, based on unity and peace.

Studying the images and text of hip-hop in popular culture can help us understand not only what this culture projects about itself, but also the messages that popular media such as MTV or major record labels choose to propagate about hip hop.

Initially hip-hop culture in the United States was ignored by the commercial radio industry and recording industry because it was believed that the music, with its connections to street culture and poor people of color,

would not appeal to advertisers. As hip hop culture gained large numbers of fans through word of mouth, commercial interests quickly saw the economic potential of such a movement and in the early to mid 80s began to make large profits off the culture. The disco spin-off “Rapper’s Delight” by the Sugar Hill Gang was the first record to prove that hip-hop could be a valuable commodity. Some within the hip-hop community began to accuse the radio and recording industries of exploitation. A fierce debate about this continues to this day.

As is common in popular culture, the commercialized music was largely dominated by themes of sex, money and violence. Artists who rapped about positive or political messages were less likely to receive lucrative recording contracts, whereas performers exploiting themes such as violence and sex were commonly rewarded with heavy airplay. The hip-hop music that came to predominate in the media was often negative and controversial. Many critics of hip hop assume that the violent, misogynistic and homophobic examples most heard on radio or MTV are indicative of the genre as a whole.

Discussion: What is hip-hop?

How do you define the term “hip-hop?” Share and discuss these definitions in small groups. Next, share the definitions with the class. Can the class come to a consensus? Don’t force it. People do not all agree. Where did you learn what hip-hop is? What sources have shaped your perspectives? Have your conceptions of hip-hop changed? Why or why not? Continue to refer back to this discussion at different points while you study hip-hop.

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Focus On: Arts IntegrationAs you know, the experience of attending an arts performance can have a lasting impact on your students. This guide is designed to help you extend the scholastic aspect of the performance before and after in your classroom. Additionally, live performances like the one your students will be attending provide great opportunities for deep, interdisciplinary lessons using an arts integration approach.

About Arts Integration

Across the nation there has been a growing interest in arts integration as an approach to teaching in which the arts leverage learning in other subject areas such as science, language arts, mathematics, and social studies.

At Overture Center, we are excited by the possibilities arts integration can bring to a school to:

• Motivate students to engage more fully with therelated subject area, encouraging joyful, activelearning.

• Extend how learners process and retain information bycombining several learning modalities (visual, aural, and kinesthetic) and thus, reaching a wider range of students.

• Make content more accessible and allow for personal connections to content.

• Help students understand and express abstract concepts.

Through this model, the arts become the approach to teaching and the vehicle for learning. Students meet dual learning objectives when they engage in the creative process to explore connections between an art form and another subject area to gain greater understanding in both. For example, in a social studies classroom, students can meet objectives in both theater and social studies by dramatizing a historical event. By mutually reinforcing objectives in both theater and social studies, students gain a deeper understanding of the content and are able to demonstrate their learning in an authentic context.

Arts Integration Resources and Activities:

Overture Center offers a variety of Professional Development Workshops for Teachers in Arts Integration each year. To find out about our next workshops and other resources for your teaching, visit overture.org/residencies. For more information on Arts Integration, please visit ArtsEdge, The Kennedy Center’s online resources (https://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/educators/how-to/series/arts-integration/arts-integration).

The following sample activity was developed to give you a taste of an arts integration lesson and to encourage arts integration in your classroom.

The Kennedy Center’s Definition for Arts Integration

Arts Integration is an APPROACH to TEACHING

in which studentsconstruct and demonstrate

UNDERSTANDINGthrough an ART FORM.

Students engage in aCREATIVE PROCESS

which CONNECTSan art form and another subject area

and meets EVOLVING OBJECTIVES

in both.

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Blackout Poetry/Hip-hop HistoryAges 11-16

Purpose: To practice essential skills related to writing and performing both poetry and hip-hop music, while investigating and interrogating the hits of these genres.

Objectives:

English Language Arts: Students will retell stories interpreting text for new meanings, practicing their own writing techniques along the way

History: Students will compare and contrast the use of lyricism, rhythm and rhyme in hip hop and poetry.

Materials:

• Markers, ideally black or dark.

• Collections of text in a disposable format - books you don’t need anymore, or printouts. Ideally this is made up of prose or poetry, but could also easily include any collection of text such as a technical manual or a textbook.

Procedure:

1. Using the history in this guide, introduce your students to the basics of hip-hop and spoken word history. Hip-hop and spoken word are inexorably intertwined, and share several core concepts: spontaneity, rhyme, and borrowing. Explain to your students that his activity will ask them to practice all three.

2. Blackout Poetry is the solution for writer’s block, and it involves borrowing from another text. By using existing text, and removing text instead of writing it, blackout poetry allows for creation through omission. With whatever disposable text you have at hand, allow your students to choose a page of their own, and give them each a marker. Tell your students to scan the page first before reading it completely. Keep an eye out for an anchor word. An anchor word is one word on the page that stands out to you because it is packed and loaded with meaning and significance. Starting with an anchor word is important because it helps you to imagine possible themes and topics for your poem. Encourage them to avoid using to many existing words or phrases, or add extra requirements such as avoiding choosing more than three words in a row. Then, using their markers, black out all the other words on the page except the ones they choose to keep, making a new

Arts Integration Activity

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poem or short bit of prose. If time allows, encourage them to add an illustration or design to the page that connects to the poem.

3. Sensory Detail is a technique to help students practicevisualization. With students’ eyes closed, guide them on amorning’s journey using all five senses: taste, touch, sight,sound, and smell. Suggest whatever setting you wish: achildhood bedroom, vacation site, etc. Encourage them totravel through their memories and imaginations, reallyfeeling the mattress springs compress under their weight,the warm blanket enveloping them as they hit the snoozebutton, how they were shocked awake by the dog’s coldnose, the temperature of water from the faucet, etc. Thentell them to open their eyes and, using all five senses, writeabout an actual moment from this particular morning,rather than the fictional guided journey.

4. Spontaneity is essential for spoken word and for hip-hop, and both a quick and agile mind is valued highly. Inthis next activity, set a time limit of a minute or less foreach of these next prompts: Have your students write downthe first word that comes to mind when the following topicsare spoken: an animal, city or town, river or body of water,fruit or vegetable, and emotion or feeling.

5. Finally, Borrowing Almost means being aware ofexisting history. Within the limits of appropriate languagefor the classroom, allows your students to look up the lyricsof an existing hip-hop track, or an existing poem. Using thethree previous techniques, encourage them to rework,remix, and rewrite these into a new poem of their own. Ifyou have confident participants, you can allow them toperform them if they wish.

Reflection:

Ask your students: What new themes came out of your changes? Why do think that is? What do you think about the way spoken word, poetry, and hip-hop have changed over the years? Would you write more spoken word? What other techniques could we use to encourage our writing habits?

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Books to ReadChang, Jeff, and DJ Kool. Herc. Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-hop Generation. New York: St. Martin’s, 2008.

Livingston, Myra Cohn. I Am Writing a Poem About-- a Game of Poetry. New York: McElderry, 1997. Ages 10 and older

A book for young poetry lovers, poetry haters, and teachers of language arts provides an intriguing--and inspiring--look at how creativity takes form in many different ways. Editor Myra Cohn Livingston gave students in a masterpoetry class at UCLA an assignment: write a poem with the word “rabbit” in it. The results were as diverse as thestudents themselves: haiku and free verse, serious and silly. The assignment continued, more complex: write a poemwith three words (ring, drum and blanket). Finally, the students wrote poems in which they all used the same fivewords, and an optional sixth word. Many of the results are published in this collection that includes the work of TonyJohnston, Ann Whitford Paul, Alice Schertle, Janet S. Wong and other students from Livingston’s class. I Am Writinga Poem About... is an exciting look at poetry and poem-writing that is whimsical, observant and insightful. Neitherstudents nor teachers should miss it. (via the Cooperative Children’s Book Center).

Smith, Charles R. Short Takes: Fast-break Basketball Poetry. New York: Dutton Children’s, 2001. Ages 10 and up.

Charles Smith, Jr., has created another dynamic collection of poems about basketball in Short Takes. Like Smith’s other books with a basketball focus, Rim Shots (1999) and Tall Tales (2000), both published by Dutton, Smith combines his motion-filled photographs with poems that jump, arc, dribble, and pound across each two-page spread. The photographs in the dazzling page design cannot be separated from the poems themselves -- each piece is a blend of words and images. Smith’s wonderful note at the end of the book comments on how he created both the visual images and the written words for this volume and will be of special interest to aspiring artists and writers. (via the Cooperative Children’s Book Center)

Smith, Efrem, and Phil Jackson. The Hip-hop Church: Connecting with the Movement Shaping Our Culture. Downers Grove, IL: IVP. Ages 10 and up.

Documents the influences the black church has had on hip hop and makes a case for how hip hop can be used in modern day worship services.

Alan Sitomer and Michael Cirelli, Hip hop Poetry Classics for the Classroom, 2004. Ages 10 and up.

Curriculum that connects hip hop artists and the classics to teach literacy and poetic devices.

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Music

H.8.2 Compare the terminology and contrastingdefinitions used for various artistic elements in each oftwo or more arts

I.4.2 Listen to and identify, by genre or style, examples of music from various historical periods and world cultures

I.4.5 Identify and describe roles of musicians in various music settings and world cultures

I.8.3 Compare, in several cultures of the world includingtheir own, functions music serves, roles of musicians, andconditions under which music is typically created andperformed

Social Studies

B.8.3 Describe the relationships between and amongsignificant events, such as the causes and consequencesof wars in United States and world history

E.8.2 Give examples to explain and illustrate howfactors such as family, gender, and socioeconomic statuscontribute to individual identity and development

E.8.3 Describe the ways in which local, regional, andethnic cultures may influence the everyday lives ofpeople

E.8.4 Describe and explain the means by whichindividuals, groups, and institutions may contribute tosocial continuity and change within a community

E.8.6 Describe and explain the influence of status, ethnicorigin, race, gender, and age on the interactions ofindividuals

E.8.7 Identify and explain examples of bias, prejudice,and stereotyping, and how they contribute to conflict in asociety

E.8.9 Give examples of the cultural contributions of racialand ethnic groups in Wisconsin, the United States, andthe world

E.8.10 Explain how language, art, music, beliefs, and othercomponents of culture can further global understandingor cause misunderstanding

E.8.11 Explain how beliefs and practices, such asownership of property or status at birth, may lead toconflict among people of different regions or culturesand give examples of such conflicts that have and havenot been resolved

E.12.5 Describe the ways cultural and social groups are defined and how they have changed over time

E.12.8 Analyze issues of cultural assimilation and cultural preservation among ethnic and racial groups in Wisconsin, the United States, and the world

E.12.12 Explain current and past efforts of groups and institutions to eliminate prejudice and discrimination against racial, ethnic, religious, and social groups such as women, children, the elderly, and individuals who are disabled

Theatre:

A.4.1 Attend a live theatre performance and discuss the experience

• explain what happened in the play

• identify and describe the characters

• say what they liked and didn’t like

• describe the scenery, lighting and/or costumes

D4.1 Explain strengths and weakness of their own work and that of others

D.4.2 Identify strengths (what worked) and weaknesses (what didn’t work) in character work and scenes presented in class

D.4.3 Identify what they need to do to make their character or scene more believable and/or understandable

D.4.4 Share their comments constructively and supportively within the group

Academic Standards

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About Live PerformanceTheater, unlike movies or television, is a LIVE performance. This means that the action unfolds right in front of an audience, and the performance is constantly evolving. The artists respond to the audience’s laughter, clapping, gasps and general reactions. Therefore, the audience is a critical part of the theater experience. In fact, without you in the audience, the artists would still be in rehearsal!

Remember, you are sharing this performance space with the artists and other audience members. Your considerate behavior allows everyone to enjoy a positive theater experience.

Prepare: Be sure to use the restroom before the show begins!

Find Your Seat: When the performance is about to begin, the lights will dim. This is a signal for the artists and the audience to put aside conversations. Settle into your seat and get ready to enjoy the show!

Look and Listen: There is so much to hear (dialogue, music, sound effects) and so much to see (costumes, props, set design, lighting) in this performance. Pay close attention to the artists onstage. Unlike videos, you cannot rewind if you miss something.

Energy and Focus: Artists use concentration to focus their energy during a performance. The audience gives energy to the artist, who uses that energy to give life to the performance. Help the artists focus that energy. They can feel that you are with them!

Talking to neighbors (even whispering) can easily distract the artists onstage. They approach their audiences with respect, and expect the same from you in return. Help the artists concentrate with your attention.

Laugh Out Loud: If something is funny, it’s good to laugh. If you like something a lot, applaud. Artists are thrilled when the audience is engaged and responsive. They want you to laugh, cheer, clap and really enjoy your time at the theater.

Discover New Worlds: Attending a live performance is a time to sit back and look inward, and question what is being presented to you. Be curious about new worlds, experience new ideas, and discover people and lives previously unknown to you. Your open mind, curiosity, and respect will allow a whole other world to unfold right before your eyes!

Please, don’t feed the audience: Food is not allowed in the theater. Soda and snacks are noisy and distracting to both the artists and audience.

Unplug: Please turn off all cell phones and other electronics before the performance. Photographs and recording devices are prohibited.

Help make arts experiences real for hundreds of thousands of people at overturecenter .org/ sup port

SPONSORS

Sponsored by American Girl's Fund for Children. Additional funding provided by the DeAtley FamilyFoundation, Kuehn Family Foundation, A. Paul Jones Charitable Trust, Promega Corporation, WisconsinArts Board with funds from the State of Wisconsin and the National Endowment for the Arts, Green BayPackaging/George F. Kress Foundation, Nancy E. Barklage & Teresa J. Welch, and by contributions toOverture Center for the Arts.

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