A new health care-focused performance piece by local playwright Aaron Jafferis will be staged later this month at HERE, a New York City venue that “supports multidisciplinary work that does not fit into a conventional programming agenda,” according to its website.
HERE’s website indicates that the work, which is called How to Break, is “a collaboration between playwright Aaron Jafferis, reknowned breakers Kwikstep and Rokafella, beatboxers Adam Matta and Yako 440, composer Rebecca Hart, and director Christopher Edwards.”
The New Haven-based Collective Consciousness Theatre is partnering with HERE and the Hip-Hop Theater Festival to produce the work.
Dexter Singleton, Collective Consciousness Theatre’s executive director, said in an e‑mail that he and Jafferis “have been long time collaborators and this show was the perfect opportunity to work on a production that was playing in New York. … We’re a company that is growing and the chance to have work of the highest artistic quality, with great actors, designers, and fellow producers in HERE and the Hip-Hop Theater Festival was a no-brainer.”
In the promotional video provided above, Jafferis describes the work as “a brand new play about being ill. It’s based on my experience as writer-in-residence at a children’s hospital and it tells the story of two hospitalized teenagers — a b‑boy with sickle cell and a popper with leukemia — who meet in the hospital and the various high jinx that ensue, both between them and their adult caregivers.”
In an e‑mail, Jafferis, who has worked with patients in Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital’s Arts for Healing program (formerly called the Child Life Arts & Enrichment Program), said, “Janice Baker (the program’s director) and Ellen Good (director of the hospital’s Child Life department) and various doctors, child-life specialists, social workers, and patients have been wonderfully supportive in making this happen. They will be the focus of the ‘Ill Art’ post-show talkback on Oct. 25.”
Discussions about the play and its subject matter are also scheduled for Oct. 24 and Oct. 28.
Jafferis and his colleagues are raising money to offset production costs. To date, they’ve received $1,140 in donations toward their $3,500 fundraising goal.
After it’s produced in New York, How to Break will be staged in New Haven and elsewhere, although dates and locations have not yet been determined.
“The tour that will start in New Haven will happen in conjunction with a new play created in the Arts for Healing program by hospitalized young people themselves,” Jafferis said, explaining that “the program has an NEA grant to create this as part of the program’s 10th anniversary celebration.”
How to Break will be staged at HERE, in New York City, Oct. 18 through Nov. 4. A detailed schedule and ticketing information can be found here. To learn about Jafferis and his colleagues’ fundraising campaign, visit their Indiegogo campaign page.