The Flea Theater

Juneteenth Public Performances

Featuring works by Jack Fuller, Shelley Nicole, Trebien Pollard, and Niegel Smith
June 14 - June 19, 2023
FREE! RSVP required for certain events.
New York City

JUNETEENTH PUBLIC PERFORMANCE COMMISSIONS ✊🏽✊🏾✊🏿🌈

Get ready to explore New York City this June 14-19 as we’re serving up our Juneteenth public performances celebrating Black joy✨, dreams✨, experiences✨, queerness✨, resistance✨, and liberation✨. Featuring new works by Jack Fuller, Shelley Nicole, Trebien Pollard, and Niegel Smith.

Schedule of Events

THE FLEA’S JUNETEENTH PUBLIC PERFORMANCE SYMPOSIUM
June 14 at 7pm ET | FREE, Reservation required
at The Flea Theater

Please join moderator Monique Martin and commissioned artists Jack Fuller, Shelley Nicole, Trebien Pollard, and Niegel Smith for a symposium offering a deeper exploration of each artist’s unique approach to Juneteenth as a prompt for their creative work. Come hear about the creative process, the intersection of performance and public life, and all the ways liberation can play out street by street in our beautiful city.  GET TICKETS

 

 

MOVING STORIES OF LIBERATION AND TRUTH…
June 16th at 5pm | FREE, No reservation required
at McCarren Park, beginning at the corner of Nassau Avenue and Lorimer Street

by Trebien Pollard and featuring Dr. Gaynell Sherrod

there are so many stories to be told. so many stories to unfold the mysteries of life and death as they live in the thriving and writhing lives of dying stories. stories that pierce the heart while also tearing the soul apart. stories that disappear and stories that get caught in fear.

What does it mean to reclaim language and discover the words one does not have. This new dance by Trebien Pollard is in dialogue with Audre Lorde’s essays entitled, The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action and Poetry is Not a Luxury.

 

THE WORTHY
June 17th at 11:30am and 4pm | FREE, Reservation required | at The African Burial Ground Monument

by Niegel Smith and featuring Talu Green

“Niegel Smith is a gift to modern theater.” – Ebony Magazine
Join an afro-futuristic griot (Niegel Smith) on a Juneteenth walk exploring our city through the lens of black love and queer liberation. Co-led by Talu Green with his commanding Djembe drumming, The Worthy is a performance that will take you through the African Burial Ground National Monument, past civic buildings and through the streets of lower Manhattan as we celebrate the intrinsic worth of Queer Black folks. The walk will conclude at The Flea. GET TICKETS

 

THOUGHTS AND INVOLUNTARY MANTRAS (STRIPPED)
June 18 at 3pm | FREE, No reservation required
at Open Streets Vanderbilt Ave, in front of 584 Vanderbilt (between St. Marks & Bergen)

by Jack Fuller

Join icon Jack Fuller through the musical feast that is Thoughts and Involuntary Mantras. This epic new work is the story of the inner life of a black queer overthinker’s first time falling in love. This public act of singing, music, and action takes you on a trip into the ways the self internalizes love, or struggles to do so. This unique piece of music theater will unfold on Vanderbilt Ave during Open Streets NYC.

 

FREEDOM IS FREE: REST, RESTORATION, REMEMBERING AND RESTITUTION
June 19th at 11am | FREE, No reservation required
at Brower Park

by Shelley Nicole

For three years Juneteenth has been a nationally recognized holiday (for better or worse) and it’s already becoming commercialized with sales and consumer events. It feels like the spirit and understanding of what this day meant to enslaved Africans is being pushed aside and is in danger of being erased. While Juneteenth is a time to celebrate it’s also a terrible tale of white supremacy and how enslaved Africans in Texas were not informed of their freedom until two years later so that slave owners could get their harvest in one last time with free labor.

With that in mind, my Juneteenth commission will focus on rest, restoration, remembering and restitution, in the spirit of Sankofa, “Go back and get it!” On this day I will offer a space of intentional breathing, gentle movement, calling in our ancestors, speaking love (self and community) into the circle and lifting our voices in song. We will also make a community altar to celebrate those who chose to survive and ultimately made it possible for us to be here today.

I ask folks to wear white or light colors, bring a blanket or something to sit on, items to place on the community altar (photos, flowers, crystals, candles, etc.), a water bottle and an open heart.

SUPPORT THE HUB. FUND THE CULTURE.

Give to The Flea and support our mission of investing in experimental art by Black, brown, and queer artists by June 30th.

DONATE NOW

Creative Team

Commissioned Artist

Jack Fuller

Jack Fuller

Commissioned Artist

Jack Fuller is an artist born and raised in Harlem NYC’s Sugar Hill. They studied at Harlem School of the Arts and LaGuardia High School as a vocalist, instrumentalist, actor, arranger, & songwriter. As a queer child in Harlem, adversity was no stranger. Always misunderstood, always different they reach for communication through their work- to understand their art is to understand them. The two spirited/two headed creative force has 2 albums out the latest of which is “The Build”. They are currently developing a new experimental opera, Thoughts and Involuntary Mantras.

Commissioned Artist

Shelley Nicole

Shelley Nicole

Commissioned Artist

At a time where it seems where every manifestation of Black self-affirmation—Black Lives Matter, Black Self-Care, Black Girl Magic—is being assailed by prickly sorts antagonized by most things Black and self-affirming, Black-on-Black love has become medicine for the melancholy, an elixir crucial to keeping the African Diaspora sane and forward-moving. Shelley Nicole—the mainspring behind Shelley Nicole’s blaKbüshe—is simultaneously a product, a witness and architect of Black-on-Black love, a calling that has informed all of her work as a singer, writer, composer, actor, poet, musician and a healer. It is the tap root of her latest work, I Am American, a collection of songs written by her and produced by award-winning guitarist, composer and producer Vernon Reid of the band Living Colour.

I Am American harks back to the Golden Age of classic albums that embraced collaborative energy from diverse, paramount artists. The album is forged from the connective tissue of rock, soul, blues, jazz and funk into a seamless, genre-defying blend while tackling the hard questions of women reclaiming their cultural identity, their psychic refuge and their personal agency. The project is part of the continuum of audacious, self-confident and eclectic Black sisterhood that extends from Rosetta Tharpe to Nina Simone to Betty Davis to Labelle to Joan Armatrading to Meshell Ndegeocello.

Even in these times, Shelley maintains every faith that love will ultimately prevail and humanity invariably will course-correct. Her truth – “Remember you’re connected to the person next to you. Everybody is, I am, you are, we are really just that connected. As we are all here, we are all part of one Source, Universal Life Force, whatever you want to call it. And we don’t know what’s coming beyond this place, but we are here now together, so how are we going to do this together a little better?”

Commissioned Artist

Trebien Pollard

Trebien Pollard

Commissioned Artist

Trebien Pollard is an assistant professor of Dance + Choreography at VCU. He received training at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, Florida A&M University, Florida State University, Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance, and from a number of gifted teachers and choreographers. Pollard has performed with many dance companies, including RIOULT, the Metropolitan Opera Ballet, Ronald K. Brown/Evidence, Bebe Miller Company, Urban Bush Women and Pilobolus. He appeared in the jazz musical opera, “The Hang” by Taylor Mac and Matt Ray. As a choreographer, Pollard has choreographed and toured with RASA recording artist “Nomad” and choreographed for director William “Electric” Black’s “The Hamlet Project,” “The Damned: A Rock Musical” and “Frankenstein: The Rock Musical.” He performed and co-choreographed with MacArthur Fellow, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar the opera, “The Ritual of Breath is the Rite to Resist” by Jonathan Berger and Vievee Francis. Trebien appeared in the feature film “Ghostlight,” starring Richard Move as “Martha Graham.” Pollard has been on faculty at the American Dance Festival, Queens College, Adelphi University, the University of Southern Mississippi, Goucher College, Middlebury College, Montclair State University, Marymount Manhattan College, University at Buffalo and Dartmouth College, as well as a licensed certified GYROTONIC® and GYROKINESIS® trainer. He earned his MFA in dance from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, and his BS in mathematics education from Florida A&M University.

The objective of Trebien’s research is to investigate the poetics of being. Trebien is interested the role aesthetics plays on the translation and understanding of form. More specifically, Pollard is interested in integrating methods of interdisciplinary design with performance practices to create work that accounts for aesthetic impressions and their impact on forms of representation and identity.

Featured Artist

Niegel Smith

Niegel Smith

Featured Artist

Niegel Smith is a Bessie Award winning theater director and performance artist. He is the Executive Artistic Director of NYC’s Obie Award winning theater, The Flea guiding the organization through its refounding as a hub for experimental art by Black, brown and queer artists. He is also a board member of A.R.T./New York and was a ringleader of Willing Participant, an artistic activist organization that whips up urgent poetic responses to crazy shit that happens.

His current directing projects include The Ritual of Breath Is the Rite to Resist, a multi-media opera and community ritual commissioned and produced by Hopkins Center for the Arts and Suzan-Lori Park’s Plays for The Plague Year produced by The Public Theater. His theater work has been produced at The Alley Theater, The Barbican, Classical Theatre of Harlem, The Flea, The Goodman Theatre, HERE Arts Center, Hip Hop Theatre Festival, The Invisible Dog, Luna Stage, The Melbourne Festival, Magic Theatre, Mixed Blood, the National Black Theatre, New York Fringe Festival, New York Live Arts, Phoenix Theatre Ensemble, Playwrights Horizons, Pomegranate Arts, The Public Theater, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Summer Play Festival, and Under the Radar, and his participatory walks and performances have been produced by Abrons Arts Center, American Realness, The Brooklyn Museum, Dartmouth College, Elastic City, The Flea, The Invisible Dog, Jack, The New Museum, Prelude Festival, PS 122, the Van Alen Institute and Visual AIDS. He often collaborates with playwright/performer Taylor Mac.

Niegel most recently directed the wildly popular and critically-acclaimed jazz opera The Hang. For this work, he was nominated for a Drama League Award in best direction. He has also collaborated with some of the world’s most celebrated musicians including En Vogue and Jon Batiste at New York City’s Park Avenue Armory. Smith is co-director of the critically acclaimed ‘A 24-Decade History of Popular Music’, winner of the Kennedy Prize in Drama, Bessie Award, the Edwin Booth Award and a Pulitzer Prize finalist. He associate directed the Tony Award winning musical FELA! – restaging that production in London, Lagos and its world tour, assistant directed the original Broadway and off-Broadway productions of Tony Kushner’s Caroline, or Change. He has worked on the artistic staffs of The Public Theater, Trinity Repertory Company and Providence Black Rep.

A graduate of Dartmouth College, Smith has received residencies, grants and/or fellowships from Brooklyn Arts Council, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the MAP Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, New York Stage and Film, Sundance Theatre Lab, Theater Communications Group, Tucker Foundation, Van Lier Fund and VoxFest. Before high school in Detroit, he grew up in the North Carolina piedmont, fishing with his dad, shopping with his mom and inventing tall-tale fantasies with his two younger brothers.www.niegelsmith.com

Featured Artist

Rasaan ‘Talu’ Green

Rasaan ‘Talu’ Green

Featured Artist

Percussionist and Composer Rasaan ‘Talu’ Green(he/him)’s performances include ones with Fela! on Broadway, the Brooklyn Nets, Soutsatzka the Musical, and MAZE, along with band collaborations with Ms. Patti Labelle, Ms. Lauryn Hill, The Roots, Aloe Blacc, Estelle, & H.E.R. Green has performed globally in Africa, North America, Australia & New Zealand, and Europe. He is a resident musician with Resura Arkestra and provides musical arrangements for dance companies and master workshops throughout New York City. He holds a BFA in music from Long Island University.

“My drum creates more than sounds; it celebrates the power of art, culture, and humanity.”

Symposium Moderator

Monique Martin

Monique Martin

Symposium Moderator

As a propagator of art, culture and ideas, Monique Martin brings her passion and experience in community building through the arts to elevate and instigate. An independent artist, curator, producer and marketing consultant, she has partnered with, produced for and performed @ Joe’s Pub, Disney
Theatricals, Apollo Theater, New Victory Theater, Southbank Centre/UK, The Shed, Hip Hop Theater Festival, NJPAC, Queens Theater in the Park and HBO. Monique has created the successful series’ Urban
Griots and Soul Erotica for Joe’s Pub and toured them nationally.

As Programming Director for City Parks Foundation (CPF) SummerStage Festival 2007-2017 she
expanded the programming by including contemporary circus, presenting local, national and
international artists. She is an ardent facilitator of collaborations across cultures, sectors and genres,
and has partnered with cultural consulates and embassies from Sweden, France, Spain, Finland,
Morocco, Cote de Ivoire and Quebec. Prior to joining SummerStage she was Associate Director of
Programming for the River2River Festival.

Ms. Martin introduced the first international artist – Afro-Swedish MC and Playwright Jason ‘Timbuktu’
Diakite and expanded commissioning and education programs as the Director of Programming for
Harlem Stage 2017 – 2021. As an Independent Creative Producer, she is currently focusing her work on supporting artists in creating new work, consulting with institutions on presenting dynamic socially
engaged programming as well as virtual, hybrid and outdoor arts. As an artist she is making her first
contemporary circus.