Field Report: Mondo Bizarro

Our summer here at Mondo Bizarro has been steaming up with a bunch of travel across the country with performances, workshops and video shoots. Now we’re gearing up for our fall season of work, some in relation to our current projects, and some other new ideas that are starting to brew.

 The Race Peace is a project of Mondo Bizarro and M.U.G.A.B.E.E. (Men Under Guidance Acting Before Early Extinction), under the mentorship of Junebug Productions and Roadside Theater, which blends multi-disciplinary performance techniques with interactive dialogue to incite conversations about race and racism. Race Peace explodes the myth that civic transformation only takes place at City Hall. We believe that true racial progress starts here—in small gatherings around the country. At each of our workshops, we use art-making as a tool for renewing conversations about race. Through performance techniques, personal stories and satire, we create a space for people to experiment, celebrate and explore common bonds; to debate their differences and pursue solutions to ongoing problems.

::DELTA VISTA’s Workshop::

Last month we had an amazing workshop with the Delta VISTAs in New Orleans. Maurice, from MUGABEE, drove in from Mississippi. Nick Slie, Bruce France, and I all worked with the group during the morning, and then passed it over to the Peoples Institute to do the afternoon portion of the work shop.

I-Witness Central City

::Event Celebration::

This is still going to happen, possibly during the fall.

I-Witness Gulf Coast 

::Interviews::

We went out to Bayou Bienvenue in the lower 9^th ward and spoke with John Tayler and Johl Calhoun about their thoughts of what’s happening with that body of water. We are currently viewing the footage and scheduling more interviews to take this a step further.

Cover art

Music Video

::Lawd Have Mercy::

Is a music video that we shot with MUGABEE in the swamp out in Pier Part earlier this year. It’s a song that talks about the Oil spill and the catastrophic event it was to nature and the ecosystem around the Gulf Coast. We are currently half way done with editing this video, and should have a clip of it to show real soon.

Street vendors at Rootsfest 2011

::Alternate Roots 35^th Anniversary::

Nick and I drove to Baltimore, MD to show a snippet of the performance for the ROOTS FEST 2011 festival.  I was also there as a photographer taking shots of community building interaction amongst the people, during the entire weekend.

- Melisa Cardona, Tulane AmeriCorps VISTA. For more information, please visit their website by clicking on this link Mondo Bizarro

Field Report: Mondo Bizarro

M.U.G.A.B.E.E. on the bayou. Photo by Melisa Cardona

It’s spring time, and the flowers are blooming, temperatures rising and projects are booming. This spring we’re geared up for several Race Peace Workshops in Universities and High schools around the city. The I-Witness Central City project is launching a cousin project, in partnership with the GRN for a new series of videos we’ll be directing and shooting called I-Witness Coast. This spring, we will take two of the 10 stories the GRN shot around the coast about different communities that are being directly impacted by the BP Oil spill, and we will go deeper to find out more about those stories.

Mondo Bizarro has also been busy shooting a Music Video with M.U.G.A.B.E.E. for a song they did called “Lawd Have Mercy”. It’s main topic is about the BP oil spill and the inaccurate news coverage that was delivered by major news channels across the country. We plan on having this video finished and completely edited by the oil spill’s anniversary – April 20^th, 2011.

The Loup Garou will also be on tour late spring – early summer, we are still working out the details for that.

In the mean time, we ask you to take a second and highly consider going to this festival in June: ROOTS FEST! Several Arts organizations will be present to show their work and spread the word about non-profits around the country, trying to work towards social justice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ROOTS FEST Video”

another I-Witness Central City Story: John O’Neal

- Melisa Cardona, Tulane AmeriCorps VISTA. For more information, please visit their website by clicking on this link Mondo Bizarro.

Field Report: Mondo Bizarro

Its 2011and we’re starting the year strong and full of projects.

Our Race Peace Residency day is approaching fast, and we’re working hard to get things in line for our February dates here in New Orleans.

 

The Race Peace

::Website::

Our new RACE PEACE website is coming SOOON!!!

And you’ll be able to log in and enter your own story about race, comment on other people’s stories and begin to have dialogues about these issues online!!!

http://racepeace.com/site/

::Jewish Community Dialogue::

On December 30^th, 2010 – Mondo Bizarro went to the New Orleans Jewish Community Center and held a dialogue with the elders in the Jewish Center. We began by doing story circles and breaking the group up in several smaller circles. Each person has exactly 3 minutes to tell a story that comes up in his or her life about race or racism. At the end of this exercise, everyone remembers an image, a sound and a smell that came up for each story that the other members told. Then the big grop gathered once again and the smaller circles show each other in small movements what the recall, or what stayed with them about the stories they heard.

Similar to this, we also will have story circles during our workshop in February, where the community members are invited to sit and listen and participate in the exercises.

::Workshop::

There Race Peace, so far, will feature several workshops through out the day where community members can participate. We want to the workshops to help community members in creating a safe space to talk about race and racism, to bring these issues to the surface and for us all to talk about them in community.

::Installation::

The new Update on the installation is that the location looks like its not going to allow us to have the installation we wanted to set up, so we’re going to focus on the workshop and performance aspects of our event, and make sure that in our next residency, there is ample space to create the installation.

::Performance::
Along with our performances, we’re going to have several of our community members performing music, dance, poetry etc at the February Race Peace Event.

 

I-Witness Central City

::Event Celebration::

We’re focusing all of our efforts right now on The Race Peace, but I’ll have a ton of updates in February for our future plans of I-Witness and the celebration of our 30 stories in the neighborhood.

Here’s a story…

::Story::

This story is the first one I edited last year for Jeffrey Cook. He passed away about a month after recording this video. His friend saw this story online and went back to the tree before the tore it down and took one of the pieces of wood from the tree house and took it to his mother after he passed away.

This is the beauty of I-Witness Central City, it helps keep these stories alive, even after we have passed.

- Melisa Cardona, Tulane AmeriCorps VISTA. For more information, please visit their website by clicking on this link Mondo Bizarro.

Field Report: Mondo Bizarro

As the year comes to a closing, Mondo Bizarro’s been diligently planning for the big 2011 and its many projects that will finally come to fruition. This month has been heavy on internal organizational meetings.  Our founder of the organization has been traveling to NPN (National Performance Network) and to the NET (Network of Ensemble Theatres), but the rest of us stayed home meeting almost daily to try and put into production our Residency for the Race Peace here in New Orleans.
On December 30^th, we’re hosting a free Workshop with the Jewish Community here in New Orleans. We’re going to gather with the community and host a workshop/Conversation with them for two hours in the Jewish Community Center. Some of the ideas that we have for the Residency in February will be used with the folks we’re meeting later this month. For my field report next month, I’ll have all of the juicy details of what happened with them. For now though, most of the work we’ve been doing is in the office, a lot of planning, a lot of meetings and a lot of dialogues amongst our selves before we reach the 2011 and take some of the projects out the community in New Orleans and beyond.

I’ve broken it down by categories for some of the stuff that’s been happening with the Race Peace Dialogue:

The Race Peace

::Workshop::

There Race Peace, so far, will feature several workshops through out the day where community members can participate. We want to the workshops to help community members in creating a safe space to talk about race and racism, to bring these issues to the surface and for us all to talk about them in community.

::Installation::

There will also be a visual installation with several interviews projected in the space, interviews that we’ve recorded across the nation of different individuals about their view on Race and Racism, and how it has impacted their lives personally. We’re also discussing possibly holding interviews in the same space with people that come to the Race Peace event, so that we have more voices to add to the collection of stories.

::Performance::
There will also be some sort of performance through out the day, but we’re still working on tying them directly to what’s being discussed during the workshops that day. So more information will come next month on the details about the performance.

It will more than likely be mini skits of a racist act, then a dialogue with the community participants will be held.

And here is some of the stuff that we’ve been talking about and working on with the I-Witness Central City Project:

I-Witness Central City

::Event Celebration::

We’ve been working with a woman in the heart of Central City to have an event in March where we bring several performers from Central City, have food and show some of the stories we’ve edited down in the past year, as a celebration of these stories and voices from community members. It’s a way to keep them alive through out the years, not just by archiving them, but by putting them up on our website and sharing them with the rest of the community members in an event like this.

::Story::

Here is one of the latest stories I personally edited down (hasn’t been shown publicly yet so its not on our website just yet), so you’re the first! Its of Gia Hamilton, Founder and Artistic Director of the Gris Gris Lab in Central City.

http://www.vimeo.com/16482264

- Melisa Cardona, Tulane AmeriCorps VISTA. For more information, please visit their website by clicking on this link Mondo Bizarro.

Field Report: Mondo Bizarro

After a long and healthy summer tour, Mondo Bizarro has been busy planning for the Loup Garou Spring Tour. Several places in southern Louisiana are on the cooking pot, as well as some other locations around the west coast. We are also planning an event for the I-Witness Central City project to sunset it for a while, so that we can have more time and energy to dedicate to the current projects that we have touring. We’re planning on having an event this winter in New Orleans, where we will show some of the latest stories we edited, and share with the community what we’ve learned from creating a project like this. We will also have food and some other forms of entertainment around. Finally, the Race Peace is scheduled for the first week of February to have its residency here in New Orleans. That should be teamed up with a couple of workshops, and a small performance that may include some of the community’s participation. The location is now confirmed, Ashe Cultural Arts Center in Central City.

-Melisa Cardona, AmeriCorps VISTA

MONDO BIZARRO
1600 Canal Blvd.
New Orleans, LA 70124
(770) 596-9166
www.MondoBizarro.org
www.AlternateROOTS.org
www.852art.wordpress.com

Field Report: Mondo Bizarro

Mondo Bizarro has been touring the Loup Garou raising coastal awareness in Amherst Massachusetts and Knoxville TN. We have also been documenting a couple of artists that where funded through NPN (National Performance Network) 20 years ago to put on performances around the country. These performances are now being remount 20 years later. The interviews took place in San Francisco and Seattle. Additionally, we have started a dialogue about branching out from our I-Witness Central City project, to another neighborhood in the city. The interviews will only be sound, and the story that will link them all are recordings of the mardigras indians and their specific tribes in the neighborhood. We’re also getting prepared to go to our annual meeting with Alternate ROOTS in August and show a preview of the Loup Garou, in partnership with the Gulf Restoration Network. -Melisa Cardona, AmeriCorps VISTA

To learn more about Melisa’s work with Mondo Bizarro, visit their website.

 

Field Report: Mondo Bizarro

We’ve been pretty busy here at Mondo Bizarro.   We just finished interviewing 5 more poeple for the I-Witness Central City Project and used 8 service learning students from Tulane.   We are currently all in Los Angeles teaching a Two day workshop and showing a work in progress of the Race Peace – our multidiciplinary performance and dialogue about race and racism.   From here I head to San Jose, CA. to attend the 20th annual meeting of NALAC, the same organization that recently took me to the White House with the Advocacy institute.   We’re also gearing up for the Loup Garou’s touring dates in the spring…   busy busy busy….- Melisa Cardona, AmeriCorps VISTA   For more information about Mondo Bizarro, check out their page at: http://www.mondobizarro.org/blog/

Field Report: Mondo Bizarro

This past month we started scheduling several interviews for the Tulane Service Learning students to come and start working with us in Central City for the I-Witness Central City Project. We’ve also been in the creative development of the performance and workshop for the Race Peace. We will be showing a work in progress in Los Angeles this April. We also just got back from taking our performance piece FLIGHT to Tulsa, OK. We also did a free and open to the public performance of this in Nunez community college last Friday, before taking it to Oklahoma. We’re also getting prepared to take the Loup Garou on tour this summer. That’s all for now! -Melisa Cardona, AmeriCorps VISTA Member To learn more about Melisa’s work at Mondo Bizarro, visit their website at: www.MondoBizarro.org Also be sure to check out: www.AlternateROOTS.org www.SONFestival.org