ANGELA KARIOTIS

Midwest premiere | “Angela Kariotis could probably light up a small city with her raw energy,” says the Chicago Reader, “but it’s her sly and engaging use of language that makes her work memorable.” Memorable to say the least…more like burned on the heart, brain and eyeball.

Angela Kariotis brings lightning moves and a switchblade tongue to her brand of hip-hop theater, drawing as much from Greek philosophers as the breakdancers and beatboxers of the New Jersey ghetto where she grew up the daughter of a single Greek immigrant mother. When Kariotis riffs in her incendiary one-woman shows about being an outsider — white in a black world, black in a white world, a girl and a Greek and an artist to boot — she isn’t posing.

Angela returns to CSPS for the Midwest premiere of Stretch Marks, a work mixing monologue, poetry, waackin’, vogueing and mime. Commissioned by Legion Arts, the National Performance Network and the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies in Austin, Texas (where it premiered in November), Stretch Marks was inspired by Angela’s experience of having a baby. It is about being born and the legacies we inherit. Familial ties, blood bonds and surpassing the summation of our factual information.

Angela explains why the work is more fundamentally than ever a one-woman show: “When your back is against the wall and you must decide, when you find yourself alone and on the verge of ecstasy and extreme terror … that’s a solo experience.”

While Angela pulls much of her material from life, she sharpened her skills at Seton Hall University and The University of Texas at Austin. Her first solo show, Reminiscence of the Ghetto & Other Things That Raized Me, was a hip-hop chronicle of her search for identity in her hometown of Irvington, N.J. For the CSPS performance of her second show in 2007, Say Logos Say Word, Angela collaborated with a Greek-American dancer from Chicago, a Greek DJ from New York and a young bouzouki performer.

Fri-Sat Mar 12-13 | 8 pm
CSPS | 1103 Third St SE | Cedar Rapids
$11 + fee in advance | $15 door

Related events  Area artists are invited to meet Angela and company at a welcome reception, 5 to 7 pm, Mon Mar 9 at the Vernon Inn, 2663 Mount Vernon Rd SE; and at an artists brunch 11 am to 12:30 pm, Sat Mar 13 at CSPS. Both events are free, donations are welcome, and RSVPs always appreciated. For more information call CSPS, 319.364.1580.

Legion Arts is a partner of the National Performance Network (NPN), and this project is made possible in part by support from the NPN Performance Residency Program. Major contributors to the NPN include the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation; the Ford Foundation; the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency; the MetLife Foundation; and the Nathan Cummings Foundation.