Masquerade: Songs of Calypso 7 Home

Roger Bonair-Agard puts the “amp” in slam poet. A native of Trinidad and Tobago and a Brooklyn resident for seventeen years, his work reflects the struggles of a man in voluntary exile in a conflicted 21st-century America. A two-time National Slam Champion who has stirred audiences from Germany to South Africa to Alaska, Agard is electrifying in performance, weaving living, breathing tapestries out of politics and the notion of home. This latest work both critiques and celebrates the Trinidadian ethos by examining the influence its seminal music exerts on a poet and the larger world. Masquerade began as a poem cycle (Cypher Brooks, 2006) and will be developed at BRIClab into a full-scale, solo theatrical presentation. Creative Advisor: Danny Hoch