ARTSPEAK RADIO +Hugh Merrill, Rick Stasi, Natasha Ria El-Scari, & Patricia Williams

Wednesday November 6, 2019 noon – 1pm CST, 90.1fm KKFI Kansas City Community Radio streaming live wwwkkfi.org

Producer/host welcomes artist/writer Hugh Merrill, writer/performer Natasha Ria El-Scari, artist/writer Rick Stasi, and Patricia Williams Cinema KC.

HUGH MERRILL-Whiteout is a multi-dimensional project designed to create dialogues on heritage, privilege, power and racism in America. It is meant to help others step forward and discuss the truth about their family histories and their own perceptions about race and discrimination. This performance includes staged readings of Merrill’s memoir, a panel discussion, poetry and an opportunity for audience participation through stories and questions.

For two years, Merrill and his daughter, Rebecca Merrill, have been investigating their family history and connection to the insidious Jim Crow laws in the American South. In an unexpected discovery, they found out about their family connection to the legal lynching of Sargent Edgar Caldwell. This provoked a deeper investigation into their family past as well as a closer look at the current state of racial inequality in this country.

Merrill, an internationally renowned artist, has written a memoir of his coming-of-age story in a house governed by those who helped write the Jim Crow laws, and the memoir is available now from Spartan Press.

We are also asking other groups concerned with historic inequality to join us and partner with us on the December 10th event to create the largest possible audience and sustain this important discussion. We offer the trade of sharing of the event to an organization’s email list and/or social medias for sharing on our own socials and flyers/programs/mentions in regards to this project. We especially are interested in deeper conversations on collaborative opportunities.

Unity Temple on the Plaza
Tuesday, December 10, 2019, 6:30, event free,
requested $5.00 donation, book available $15

NATASHA RIA EL-SCARI-This year my brilliant, African American son, turned 20 years old. I was so excited to see him enter his 20s and even more excited that I felt he was prepared. During our annual birthday conversation he shared with me that he thought I needed to write a book sharing with others our conversations about love and lovemaking.

When we began to discuss his college experiences, he said that he learned quickly most of the men he encountered were not only clueless when they talked about sex but if they did discuss sex, they had archaic ideas about women in general as well as their intimate interactions with them.

This is the moment Mama Sutra: Love and Lovemaking Advice to My Son was born. Together my son and I compiled stories and topics we felt were important and we interviewed men of all ages, races, cultures, classes and backgrounds. We wanted to see what their mothers taught them about love and lovemaking. What we learned based on the data we collected is that there was a great deal of missing information, miscommunication, histories of shame, patriarchy and negativity as it relates to asking questions and stereotypes around intimacy between men and women.

This book is geared for young people 18 and over but is appropriate for many younger teens with the parental guidance. The 200+ pages are place emphasis on better and frequent communication between mothers and sons about love and physical and emotional intimacy. It challenges systemic patriarchal notions, not only of lovemaking but also of the women who teach their sons about intimacy.

As a well known poet, performer, editor and author of two books, Screaming Times (Spartan Press) and The Only Other (Main Street Rag), many are excited that Mama Sutra is my first non-fiction and self published book!

RICK STASI is an artist/writer/intellectual properties producer with credits at DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Charlton Comics, NOW Comics (Twilight Zone), Eclipse, Disney, Warner Bros. (Looney Tunes & Tiny Toons for Steven Spielberg) and LucasFilms/STAR WARS. Rick also contributes to Wonder Woman Day, an annual charity event that supports shelters for abused women and children.
Rick has taught comics, sequential art and storyboarding courses for more that twenty years, as an instructor with the Shawnee Mission School District, The Westport School of Art and The Kansas City Art Institute. He currently gives individual instruction and career counseling.
Rick Stasi’s first non-comics related publishing venture, a book of original poetry and musings titled Funny You Should Ask! is in its second printing. Rick also produced a 2-CD audio collection of original poetry, musings and music Talking To Myself (To You!) and performs An Evening With Rick Stasi, one-man shows in live venues, for local charities. Currently, he is working on an animated version of this work. He is also voice talent.
Rick has recently launched his own YouTube channel, Ninth Street Theatre Presents, Playhouse of the Mind featuring his spoken word performances and graphic design. www.rickstasi.com

PATRICIA WILLIAMS- The CinemaKC Legacy Series and the KC Film Office will present a special screening of the locally filmed Nicholas Meyer classic, The Day After on Wednesday, November 6, 2019, at 6:45 p.m. at the Glenwood Arts Theatre, 3707 W 95th St, Overland Park, KS 66206. The Kansas International Film Festival (KIFF) is sponsoring the event.

The screening of The Day After will have a Q&A following from 8:50 p.m. – 9:30 p.m., featuring two special guests. Film critic and historian Jon Niccum will discuss the details of the production. Roy Inman, who served as production photographer for The Kansas City Star will show his work and narrate it.

Tickets for the event are $10 General Admission and a free KIFF ticket is included. KIFF passholders can obtain a free ticket. All tickets are available through the Glenwood Arts Theatre box office or website https://tinyurl.com/y5jr5bwz

Production for The Day After began in August, 1982, in Lawrence, Ks.. Local extras were paid $75 to shave heads bald, have prosthetic latex scar tissue and burn-marks affixed to their faces, be plastered with coats of artificial mud, and be dressed in tattered clothes for scenes of radiation sickness. They were requested not to bathe or shower until filming was completed. In a small Lawrence park, ABC set up a grimy shantytown to serve as home to survivors. It was known as “Tent City.” On Friday, September 3, 1982, the cameras rolled with many students as extras.

There were also scenes filmed in St. Joseph, Mo., and Kansas City, Mo.. Special effects were implemented in order to create the destruction of the World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, Mo.

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