Poor People’s TV Room

Bessie Award-winning and New York Live Arts’ Randjelovic/Stryker Resident Commissioned Artist Okwui Okpokwasili presents the culmination of her two-year residency at Live Arts with the New York Premiere of Poor People’s TV Room.  The piece is informed by two historic incidents in Nigeria: The Women’s War of 1929, a resistance movement against British colonial powers, and the Boko Haram kidnappings of more than 300 girls that launched the Bring Back Our Girls movement. Created in collaboration with director/visual designer Peter Born, the piece will be performed by a multi-generational ensemble, featuring movement, song and text influenced by dystopian folklore, speculative fiction, Igbo cosmology and the futures and commodities markets.
Contains nudity.

Poor People’s TV Room is produced by MAPP International Productions in association with New York Live Arts, with lead support from New York Live Arts Randjelovic/Stryker Resident Commission Artist program (RCA). The RCA receives major support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and Slobodan Randjelovic & Jon Stryker. 

Poor People’s TV Room has been commissioned by the American Dance Institute and the Walker Center for the Arts. Poor People’s TV Room is a project of Creative Capital. It has received funding from The MAP Fund, supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The New England Foundation for the Arts National Dance Project, supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; and from the National Endowment for the Arts. It is supported by developmental residencies at The Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography at Florida State University in Tallahassee, FL; Brooklyn Creative Arts LAB (BRIC) and 92Y in New York; The Rauschenberg Residency (Robert Rauschenberg Foundation) on Captiva Island, FL; and Wesleyan University in Middlebury, CT. An early work-in-progress iteration of Poor People’s TV Room was presented by Lincoln Center in the David Rubinstein Atrium in June 2014.