Learn More About This Event Below

Our WaterWorks series is all about ENGAGING AUDIENCES IN THE CREATIVE PROCESS.  As our signature series, the audience has an opportunity to participate in a number of ways unique to each project, artist and their creative process from inception to finished work.

Acclaimed pianist/composer Vijay Iyer and celebrated poet/performer Mike Ladd, with Iraq veteran and poet Maurice Decaul, launched a new work-in-progress commissioned by Harlem Stage’s WaterWorks program earlier this year in February.

This time Holding it Down: The Veterans’ Dreams Project calls for more involvement from the community.  If you are a veteran and a writer, performer, or simply someone with a dream to share, then join us for this community workshop with theater director Patricia McGregor.

During this initial creative community meeting, we will discuss the project’s goals, format, timeline, and content. Veterans are invited to participate in a series of collaborative writing and performance workshops throughout the summer.

Some veterans selected from the workshops may perform some of the stories, poems, and songs onstage, in collaboration with civilian artists. Collaboration requires significant creative input of all participants including writing and performing researched material. Participants should be comfortable on stage and/or be prepared to work with both literary text and music.

If you are a veteran and feel you can meet those requirements, simply have suggestions or are interested in learning more about the work, please join us.  We look forward to working with you.

For more information on the process or if you would like to speak with Mike Ladd, you may call him at (617) 599-9059, or e-mail him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Please make a reservation for the workshop with your name, telephone and e-mail address by e-mailing This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ; or call 212-281-9240 ext. 19 or 20.

Featured Artist:

Vijay Iyer

Mike Ladd

Maurice Decaul

Patricia McGregor

Vijay Iyer

Vijay Iyer (VID-jay EYE-yer) is one of today’s most acclaimed young jazz pianists and composers. He has released thirteen albums, most recently Historicity, which was named #1 jazz album of 2009 by the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, National Public Radio, and the annual Village Voice jazz critics poll. In recent years, Iyer won the Downbeat Magazine International Critics' Poll in the Rising Star Jazz Artist, Composer, and Pianist categories, was named Up & Coming Musician of the Year in the JJA Jazz Awards, and received the CalArts Alpert Award in the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, and numerous composer commissions.  Iyer has composed orchestral and chamber works; scored for film, theater, radio and television; collaborated with poets and choreographers; and joined forces with artists in hip-hop, rock, experimental, electronic, and Indian classical music. He has worked extensively with Steve Coleman, Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, Amiri Baraka, Butch Morris, Oliver Lake, dead prez, Karsh Kale, Talvin Singh, Imani Uzuri, and DJ Spooky, among others. Holding it Down is Iyer’s third major collaboration with poet-performer Mike Ladd. Iyer teaches at New York University, The New School, and School for Improvisational Music. His writings appear in Music Perception, Journal of Consciousness Studies, Current Musicology, JazzTimes, Wire, The Guardian, and the anthologies Uptown Conversation, Sound Unbound, and Arcana IV. He is a Steinway artist.

www.vijay-iyer.com

Mike Ladd

Writer and music producer Michael C. Ladd was born in Boston MA. He received a B.A. in Black expatriates in the nineteenth century from Hampshire College and an M.A. in poetry from Boston University. He is published in several literary magazines including Long Shot Review and Bostonia. Ladd’s work is also featured in the book Swing Low, Black Men Writing and several anthologies, including, Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café, In Defense of Mumia, Bum Rush The Page, Por La Victoire, Everything But the Burden, and Rip It Up, Essays on Black Rock in the U.S. Ladd is the writer and producer of ten albums, including Easy Listening For Armageddon (Scratchie/Mercury records), Negrophilia: The Album (Thirsty Ear), Father Divine (ROIR) and The Infesticons, Bedford Park (Big Dada). As a fellow at the Institute for Arts and Civic Dialogue at Harvard University, Ladd produced and directed Blood Black and Blue, an audio documentary/performance about Black police officers in the United States. At the Asia Society, Ladd worked with pianist Vijay Iyer on In What Language, a project about people of color in relation to globalization in the context of airports. Their following project, Still Life With Commentator had its New York premiere at Brooklyn Academy of Music. He also directed and produced, in collaboration with the Kitchen, Domestica, a crooked opera. Ladd continues to work extensively with youth in Parisian suburbs such as Nanterre, Aubervillers, Pantin and Saint Denis. Ladd currently lives in Paris with his wife and two children.

www.myspace.com/mikeladd

Maurice Decaul

Poet Maurice Decaul emigrated from the island of St. Vincent in 1985. He graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School in 1998. Decaul served in the Marines from 1998 to 2002 and again during the spring of 2003 for Operation Iraqi Freedom. He now attends Columbia University and is majorning in creative writing.

http://3.ly/bcZ

Patricia McGregor

Patricia McGregor recently graduated from the directing program at the Yale School of Drama where she was Artistic Director of the Yale Cabaret. She has worked at venues including Broadway, BAM, Second Stage, The Kennedy Center, The Public Theater, The Kitchen, the O’Neill National Playwriting Conference, Lincoln Center Institute, and Exit Art.  Directing credits include Jelly's Last Jam, Romeo and Juliet, Four Electric Ghosts, The French Play, Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill, Eleemosynary, Sidewalk Opera, Dancing in the Dark, The Covering Skyline is Nothing, In the Meantime, In the Cypher, Imaginary Audience, The Twenty-Four Hour Plays, Guernica-The Musical!, 365 Days 365 Plays, Clarisse and Larmon, Totems, Three Sisters, and My Children My Africa.  She was Associate Director on Roger Guenveur Smith's Juan and John, Assistant Director on Tarell McCraney's Brother Sister Plays at The Public and Winter's Tale at NYTF Shakespeare in the Park.  Patricia was both a McDougal Scholar and Presidential Scholar and received the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans. Upcoming collaborations include directing a James Brown piece with Burnt Sugar at The Apollo and Building a Better Fish Trap with her sister and collaborator Paloma McGregor.  She is co-founder of Angela's Pulse, a company which creates vital dance and theater works and fosters collaboration among artists, educators, organizers, academics and other diverse communities in order to illuminate under told stories, infuse meaning into the audience experience and animate progress through the arts.