Debut For Spoken Word Artist Zena
Apples & Snakes in association with BAC and Birmingham Repertory Theatre present
SECURITY
Written and performed by Zena Edwards
Directed by Anthony Shrubsall
Wednesday 22 – Friday 24 April at 7.45pm
PRESS NIGHT: Wednesday 22 April at 7.45pm
Does the flash of a blade in broad daylight mean the beginning or the end of SECURITY?
Spoken word artist and musician Zena Edwards makes her debut theatre performance at Birmingham Repertory Theatre from Wednesday 22 to Friday 24 April, with a new play that addresses London knife crime, nationality, intergenerational tension and neuroses.
The chaotic stories of five characters, from Palestine to Peckham, are exposed through the eye of a camera by Edwards’ fusion of performance poetry, theatre, movement and song: an example of the coined term "choreo-poetry" following her work with UK and US hip hop theatre peers Jonzi D, Will Power and Benji Reid.
The lead voice in a new generation of performance poets, Zena Edwards is the cutting edge of contemporary urban writing and lyrics lyricism, with a sensuous, rhythmic style born from a diverse range of influences, from African music and storytelling to world jazz innovators via hip hop, and spoken word artists Linton Kwesi Johnson and Roger McGough. A prolific creative talent, for BBC Radio 3 she has written Bloodlines exploring blood, lineage, Africa and being Black-British in the UK, as well as a hip hop musical Slamdunk (2003), and two CDs of poems Healing Pool and Mine 4 Life.
Internationally acclaimed Zena is a much- loved regular on the poetry, festival and music circuits, from the Royal Festival Hall to The Durban Playhouse, London Jazz Festival, WOMAD and Glastonbury.
Apples & Snakes is the UK’s leading performance poetry organisation, stretching the boundaries of poetry in education and live performance. Over the last five years Apples & Snakes has worked with a number of spoken word artists to produce one-person theatrical storytelling shows including Lemn Sissay’s Something Dark.
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