SunRa Returns! Jazz Puppet Opera

Luisa was invited to help directing this crazy beautiful piece of art. PS 3, The Bedford Village School, located at 50 Jefferson Avenue in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn and The Shadow Box Theatre (SBT), a fifty year old Musical Puppet Theatre announce a collaborative one-time only performance of a unique theatrical event on May 26th, 1 PM at PS 3’s auditorium. "Sun Ra Returns", is a synergistic Jazz puppet opera, conceived by former Sun Ra Arkestra trumpeter Ahmed Abdullah, who currently teaches music at PS 3 and the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music and Shadow Box Theatre's internationally acclaimed visual artist Tine Kindermann, with original puppets built by PS3 students under the guidance of renowned puppeteer Jane Catherine Shaw. The production combines tenets of PS 3's school wide Leadership program, "The Leader in Me,” Stephen Covey's innovative Seven Habits of Highly Effective People repackaged for public and private schools, along with the futuristic lyrics and music of Sun Ra expressed through a different new medium, a puppet opera. This science fiction epic takes the audience to Saturn, back to planet Earth and then to Saturn again. Ahmed Abdullah, a trumpeter who worked with Sun Ra for a span of 22 years and who has led his own bands since 1972, has organized the music and will lead an ensemble comprised of New School students and his own band, Diaspora. Tine Kindermann, a visual artist with 23 years experience in theater, whose artwork has shown in New York as well as her native Germany, will be directing and building sets and props with the PS3 students. All puppet, set and costume designs are original and by Bedford Village School students. This production, coordinated by Carol Prud'homme Davis, SBT Managing/ArtsEd Director and Stephen Mohney, PS 3 Arts and Technology Coordinator, includes all of the disciplines of the arts: music, poetry, dance, visual arts and theater, and provides a rare opportunity for elementary school students to work with college students and professional musicians.