ON STAGE 2024
7NMS | Marjani Forté-Saunders and Everett Saunders, Prophet: The Order of the Lyricist
May 09, 20247:30 pm
May 10, 20247:30 pm
May 11, 20247:30 pm
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Content warning: The program contains loud sounds.
About the Performance
A multi-genre storytelling project about the life journey of a lyricist, Prophet: The Order of the Lyricist illuminates the distinctive practices, systems, philosophies, and political ideologies that have shaped hip-hop’s emcees and lyricists. Combining craft, prose, oration, and exposé, the work presents the coming-of-age story of an emcee, immersing audiences in a world of courage, self-determination, and devotion. Using text, sound, film, and performance, Prophet stands as a critical and embodied offering to the scholarly, civic, and ancient bodies of radical Black expression.
Runtime: approx. 75 min.
About the Artists
Operating in California and New York, 7NMS is the public emergence of Marjani Forté-Saunders and Everett Saunders’s work as a collaborative team, radically engaging art as a medium of elevation, healing, and futurity. With seven award-winning projects in the last 10 years, 7NMS totes a revolutionary commitment to Black radical imagination. Prophet is an awardee of the 2020 MAP Fund, the 2020 New Music USA Award, and the 2022[GS7] National Dance Project Production and Touring grant.
Marjani is a 2019 FCA Fellowship awardee, a three-time Bessie award winner, and an inaugural recipient of the Jerome Hill, Dance USA, and UBW Choreographic Center Fellowships. Everett is the composer and thought-partner behind the award-winning and internationally touring production Memoirs of a … Unicorn and a two-time New Music USA Awardee. His recent work can be found as composer/sound designer on Jaamil Kosoko’s Chameleon, Mayfield Brooks’s Whale Fall, and Urban Bush Women’s Hair & Other Stories (2018).
While 7NMS incubated Prophet during Fall 2020 and Winter 2021 residencies in newly erected home studios, 7NMS also worked in close collaboration with co-visionaries d. Sabela grimes (movement composer and sound archivist), Meena Murugesan (filmmaker and media designer), and Marc Winston (photographer), to produce Prophet’s latest filmic iteration, commissioned by dance center Jacob’s Pillow.
Funding
Lead support for the 2023–24 season of MCA Performance and Public Programs is provided by Elizabeth A. Liebman.
Generous support is provided by Ginger Farley and Bob Shapiro, Martha Struthers Farley and Donald C. Farley, Jr. Family Foundation, N.A., Trustee; Susan Manning and Doug Doetsch; Carol Prins and John Hart/The Jessica Fund; and an anonymous donor.
Additional generous support is provided by Diane Kahan and Anne L. Kaplan.
The MCA is a proud member of the Museums in the Park and receives major support from the Chicago Park District.