BAM : Brooklyn Academy of Music

FEB—MAY 2008
Live performances for elementary, junior high, and high school students.

INTRODUCTION
ELEMENTARY AND JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS (kaBAM)
HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS (Generation BAM)

INTRODUCTION

Pre-Show Preparation Workshops and Teacher's Study Guides
The following provide links to the curriculum, the Learning Standards, the Blueprints for Teaching and Learning in the Arts, and students' personal experiences.

Pre-Show Preparation Workshops
Every class attending a performance or film receives an in-school, pre-show preparation workshop. In these interactive workshops, BAM's extraordinary teaching artists provide essential context and behind-the-scenes information to enhance the students' appreciation of what they will experience at BAM.

Teacher's Study Guides
Teachers receive an extensive study guide for each performance or film. These materials are tailored to each program and explicitly relate to the Learning Standards and the Blueprints for Teaching and Learning in the Arts; they typically include:

• Background information about the company, artists, or film
• Historical and cultural context
• Curriculum connections
• Writing assignments
• Classroom activities
• Tools to foster analytical thinking

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ELEMENTARY AND JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

Note: Ticket price includes a pre-show preparation workshop for every class attending the performance, a teacher's study guide, and a post-performance discussion.

MUSIC
What is Latin Jazz?
Arturo O'Farrill and The Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra

Tue, Mar 18 at 10:30am
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
Tickets: $8

Running Time: 90min (includes post-show discussion)
Grades 3—8

Internationally-acclaimed artist Arturo O'Farrill and The Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra lead an exploration into jazz and Latin culture using the music of Duke Ellington, Machito, Dizzy Gillespie, and other musicians. The audience will be swept up in a swirl of mambo and swing while learning to create Afro Cuban rhythms alongside the legendary Orchestra. O'Farrill was the winner of the Latin Jazz USA Outstanding Achievement Award for 2003 and his Orchestra's debut album, Una Noche Inolvidable, earned a Grammy nomination in 2006.

Presented as part of BAM's music initiative Brooklyn Next which highlights the extraordinary and diverse music of the borough.

DANCE
DanceAfrica

Wed, May 21 at 10:30am Limited availability
Thu, May 22 at 10:30am Sold out!
BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
Tickets: $8

Running Time: 90min
Grades K—12

Among BAM's annual highlights are the performances by the DanceAfrica visiting ensemble. This year's company, selected by DanceAfrica Artistic Director Chuck Davis from Africa or the African Diaspora, will present two exhilarating programs exclusively for students and teachers.

The artist-in-residency programs, AfricanDanceBeat and AfricanMusicBeat, will focus on the culture of the company and will include a ticket to a performance as part of the residency fee.

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HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

Note: Ticket price includes a pre-show preparation workshop for every class attending the performance, a teacher's study guide, and a post-performance discussion.

THEATER
Macbeth
By William Shakespeare
Chichester Theatre Festival
Directed by Rupert Goold

Wed, Mar 19 at 10:30am Sold out!
BAM Harvey Theater
Tickets: $10

Running time: 3hr 30min (includes post-performance discussion)
Grades 9—12

"Hushed intensity and thrilling clarity: Patrick Stewart is superb as Macbeth."—The Daily Telegraph (UK)

Macbeth, one of Shakespeare's most celebrated tragedies, is a searing tale of ambition, sacrifice, and the power of choice. Acclaimed director Rupert Goold transports the play from Scotland to Stalinist Russia, conjuring a strange and supernatural world in which kingship, marriage, and morality itself are grounds for contest. Macbeth features a stellar ensemble cast, including Olivier-award winner Patrick Stewart (Star Trek: The Next Generation, X-Men, A Christmas Carol, The Tempest).

See Shakespeare Teaches for related professional development and arts residency programs.

POETRY
Poetry 2008: Expression in the Right Direction

Wed, Mar 26 at 10:30am Sold out!
Thu, Mar 27 at 10:30am Limited availability
BAM Harvey Theater
Tickets: $8

Running time: 2hr (includes post-performance discussion)
Grades 9—12

Poetry 2008: Expression in the Right Direction is a cross-generational and interdisciplinary performance featuring diverse and groundbreaking professional poets along with musicians who demonstrate the vitality of the spoken word. Previous years' sold-out performances have featured a multicultural group of poets including Will Power, Steve Colman, Staceyann Chin, Rha Goddess, Yusef Komunyakaa, Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai, Universes, and young national poetry slam team winners.
2008 artists will be announced in January.

THEATER
Sizwe Banzi is Dead
The Baxter Theatre Centre
By Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona
Directed by Aubrey Sekhabi

Fri, Apr 11 & Wed, Apr 16 at 10:30am
BAM Harvey Theater
Tickets: $8

Running time: 2hr 15min (includes post-performance discussion)
Grades 9—12

In 1970s South Africa, playwright Athol Fugard and actors John Kani and Winston Ntshona quit their jobs and risked arrest to write a story about apartheid in their divided home. In fact, when they performed this play in their own country in 1976, the actors were imprisoned, but after 15 days in solitary confinement, they were released due to an international outcry of support. Now nearly forty years later, Kani and Ntshona restage their controversial work.

Based largely on Fugard's experiences as a law clerk in Johannesburg, the play documents South Africa at its most brutally segregated, when special ID cards restricted where blacks could both travel and work. We meet Sizwe, a rural black worker who, without a proper pass of his own, is forced to assume the identity of a dead man in order to continue pursuing his dreams. Kani and Ntshona bring to life once again this caustic, yet often humorous, and ultimately ennobling, critique of complacency during dark times. Generation BAM audiences also saw these remarkable artists in another of their collaborations with Fugard, The Island, in 2003.

THEATER
Endgame
Written by Samuel Beckett
Directed By Andrei Belgrader
Produced by BAM

Thu, May 8 at 10:30am
BAM Harvey Theater
Tickets: $8

Running time: 2hr (includes post-performance discussion)
Grades 9—12

This production of Endgame is an ideal introduction to the strange, humorous, and beautiful landscape of Samuel Beckett's theatrical world. It is a rare opportunity for students to explore the work of this major playwright and to see a modern masterpiece performed by internationally-acclaimed artists. Beckett (also the author of Waiting for Godot) has influenced other playwrights whom the students may already know such as David Mamet, Sam Shepard, Edward Albee, and Suzan-Lori Parks.

A favorite of film directors like Spike Lee and the Coen brothers, John Turturro endows one of Beckett's most affecting works with emotional urgency as Hamm, a man who, confined to an old armchair on wheels and unable to see, registers as poignant, deeply sardonic, and proud. Directed by Andrei Belgrader, master of comic and absurdist stagecraft, each character—from Hamm to his recalcitrant manservant Clov, to his ashcandwelling parents—wrestles with cosmic questions. Acutely aware that death is inescapable, they remain divinely valiant in the face of it.