Your. passport. Teacher s Resource Guide Mayhem Poets. Generous support for SchoolTime provided, in part, by

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1 Your passport to culture Teacher s Resource Guide Mayhem Poets Generous support for SchoolTime provided, in part, by

2 CONTENTS On Stage Poetry and motion In the Spotlight Classmates become co-stars Did You Know? From Beats to beatbox Poetry Talk A guide to spoken word performance In the Classroom Teaching Science Through Theater and other activities More Resources Related readings and other media Foundation The New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) Arts Education Department presents the 15 th season of the Verizon Passport to Culture SchoolTime Performance Series. Teacher s Resource Guide This resource guide will help you prepare your class for an enriching experience at our SchoolTime Performance. The guide provides discussion ideas, activities and reading resources that can promote arts literacy in your classroom. Permission is granted to copy and distribute this guide to any class attending a SchoolTime Performance (all other rights reserved). You can find additional resources online at artsed.njpac.org. NJPAC Arts Education At NJPAC, our mission is to join with parents, teachers and community to cultivate an appreciation of the arts in all children of New Jersey. We believe the arts provide an effective means of knowing and learning that helps children find the self-esteem, poise and confidence they need to succeed in every facet of life. Our innovative programs are designed to engage the artist in every child: In-School Residencies Bring the joy of dance, music and theater directly into your classroom with teaching artists who create stimulating performing arts experiences that engage students imaginations and encourage their creative self-expression. Kid Power! Through energy efficiency and conservation, kids can help preserve our planet s rich natural resources and promote a healthy environment. TIP OF THE DAY Clean-conscious In their performances, the Mayhem Poets demonstrate the power of the voice in calling for action. They deliver their messages in schools and on city streets, as well as in parks and playgrounds. You can make outdoor spaces attractive and safe for friends and neighbors by joining in community-sponsored cleanup projects. Collecting trash and recyclables is not only good exercise in the warm spring weather it s an opportunity to meet new people and preserve our environment. Made possible through the generosity of the PSEG Foundation. SchoolTime and FamilyTime Performances Open your students eyes to the worlds of music, dance, storytelling, theater, and puppetry through professional stage productions. Arts Training Programs Students express themselves through after-school study of acting, dance, instrumental music, vocal music, and musical theater. Teaching artists with professional performing arts experience mentor the students at NJPAC s Center for Arts Education. VISIT US ONLINE Find additional resources online at artsed.njpac.org 2

3 By Carrie Stetler You won t find the Mayhem Poets standing behind a podium, reciting verses from a book. Their brand of poetry is called spoken word. The three perform their poems using movement, staging and sound effects. Sometimes they borrow from rap and hip-hop music. At their NJPAC performances, the Mayhem Poets will add another dimension to their show: violin music and tap dancing. The Mayhem Poets trio Kyle Sutton (aka Kyle Rapps ), Scott ( Scott Raven ) Tarazevits and Mason Granger started their group as Rutgers University students in the early 2000s. Although they eventually learned a lot about the history of poetry and classical literature, none of them had studied poetry when they formed the group. On Stage Having their say, in a rhythmic way The Mayhem Poets were inspired by listening to other spoken word artists at open mics and poetry slams, a competitive form of performance similar to a lyrical battle or contest between rappers. It s an amazing ride. The New York Times As a group, they went out and performed wherever they could nursing homes, prisons, schools, and fraternity parties. After college, they stayed together and continued touring. But their big break came when they won $100,000 in a 2007 competition sponsored by Microsoft for the best business plan. After operating Slam Chops, a poetry cafe in New York City for two years, they decided to focus on touring. The poets hope their show illustrates that poetry can be fun. But they also want students to learn about the literary conventions of poetry. Although there are many brilliant spoken word poets, and many have gone on to be successful, the Mayhem Poets believe their act has lasted because it incorporates elements of a theatrical production. They know the best poems work on paper and on stage and compare their shows to an off-broadway play or musical. Look at Shakespeare, says Sutton. You can read it and have a great experience and see it live and have a great experience. Carrie Stetler is a freelance writer and communications specialist at Rutgers University. She has written extensively about hip-hop culture. For more about the Mayhem Poets, go to mayhempoets.com. The Mayhem Poets, from left, Mason Granger, Scott ( Scott Raven ) Tarazevits and Kyle ( Kyle Rapps ) Sutton. 3

4 In the Spotlight Poetry with a mix of Mayhem Kyle Sutton, spokesman of the Mayhem Poets, was born in Michigan and grew up in Princeton, New Jersey. He wasn t poor, but in a town filled with wealth and privilege, he lived in lower-income housing, so I felt poorer than I actually was, he remembers. At age 17, he saw his first spoken word poetry show in Trenton and decided that was what he wanted to do. It spoke to me, he says. I was young, angry and dealing with a lot of coming of age issues, he says. It had humor, doses of reality and great language. He hopes the Mayhem Poets can connect with teens that same way. Their shows at NJPAC will touch upon themes like family relationships, grief and personal triumph. While attending Rutgers University, Sutton met Scott Tarazevits, a theater major, at an open mic event in New Brunswick. They formed the Mayhem Poets and were later joined by Mason Granger, a psychology major. They performed on campus and branched out to local gigs. Back then, Sutton wasn t a huge fan of traditional poetry. But once he started performing, he grew curious about timehonored poets. At Rutgers, he learned about writers like John Milton and delved into the work of poet Pablo Neruda. His love of Spanish poetry and literature inspired him to earn a bachelor s degree in Spanish. In addition to the Mayhem Poets, Sutton has a career as a rapper. Under the name Black Skeptik he has worked with rappers KRS-ONE and Talib Kweli. As Kyle Rapps, his new pseudonym, he s currently finishing his debut album, which was recorded in Los Angeles, New York and on a refugee camp in Ghana, Africa, where the Mayhem Poets have taught poetry workshops. For more about Mayhem Poets, visit mayhempoets.com. C.S. 4

5 Spoken word: poetry that calls for action Many poets have read their work to an audience, but their poems were written with readers in mind. Spoken word poems are created to be addressed to a crowd. They are part of a tradition of oral poetry, which refers to work that is presented apart from any written form, although often it just refers to poems that are performed live, even if they also exist on the page. Societies throughout the world have art forms related to oral poetry, whether storytelling or chants and rhythmic speech. Although non-literate cultures rely exclusively on these forms, they also exist in literate cultures. A poet s work is to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep. Salman Rushdie In the U.S., the spoken word movement evolved in the 1970s and 1980s, but its roots are in the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance, blues music and Beat generation writers, such as Allen Ginsberg ( ). The Beats, as they were known, rejected literary and social conventions and valued the freedom and honesty of jazz and blues music. Their raucous poetry readings were known for improvisation. Ginsberg s classic 1955 poem Howl, a cry against repression and materialism, was written as a performance piece. Like spoken word poets, the Beats work often contained social commentary and expressions of defiance. In the 1960s, African-American artists and performers also pioneered a form of spoken word. Among the most wellknown were the Last Poets, a musical group whose political lyrics are regarded as a precursor to rap music, and Gil Scott- Heron, whose poem/song The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, released in 1970, was a biting critique of consumer culture and advertising. In 1973, the Nuyorican Poets Cafe was established in New York City. It became the first and most well-known venue for spoken word poetry and is credited with hosting the first slam poet competition in In the 1980s, the spoken word movement gained momentum as part of the Post-Modern art movement, which incorporated live storytelling. Artist Hedwig Gorski, credited with coining the term performance poetry in 1981, was known for presenting all of her poetry live or on audio and video, instead of the printed page. Spalding Gray s Swimming to Cambodia, a monologue about his experiences as an actor in the film The Killing Fields, was made into a 1987 film itself and punk rocker Henry Rollins, of the group Black Flag, began presenting spoken word pieces in addition to his musical career. In the 1990s, the slam poetry movement caught fire. Audiences were most familiar with spoken word poetry through Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam, which popularized the form in the early 2000s and featured many champion slam poets. Today both slam poetry and spoken word are performed in theaters and at open mics, at college campuses and clubs and at conferences. And both continue to evolve and intermingle with other art forms, like dance and instrumental music. The immediacy of spoken word, and the ability of spoken word poets to give voice to the anger, frustration and humor of the moment, ensures that no matter the form, this performance art will resonate for years to come. C.S. Did You Know? New Jersey native Allen Ginsberg was a Beat generation poet whose poem Howl was intended as a performance piece. Monologist Spalding Gray wrote and performed many of his spoken word works, such as Swimming to Cambodia. 5

6 Poetry Talk Knowing the language of spoken word Performance poetry is a combination of several art forms: performance art, spoken word poetry and theater. diction the selection of words to express ideas in a literary work. A work s diction forms one of its centrally important literary elements as writers use words to convey action, reveal character, imply attitudes, identify themes, and suggest values. free verse poetry without a regular pattern of meter or rhyme. The verse is free in not being bound by earlier poetic conventions requiring poems to adhere to an explicit and identifiable meter and rhyme scheme, such as in a sonnet or ballad. Modern and contemporary poets of the 20th and 21st centuries often employ free verse. hip-hop the stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rap; a popular urban youth culture closely associated with rap music and with the style and fashions of African-American inner-city residents. irony a contrast or discrepancy between what is said and what is meant or between what happens and what is expected to happen in life and in literature. In verbal irony, characters say the opposite of what they mean. metaphor a comparison between essentially unlike things without an explicitly comparative word, such as like or as. For example: Life is a brokenwinged bird. (Dreams by Langston Hughes) meter the measured arrangement of words, rhythm, number of syllables, or number of syllables per line. In music, it is a way to measure rhythmic patterns and is also used in poetry. performance art a popular name for art activities that encompass elements of music, dance, poetry, theater, and video. personification a literary device that is popular among spoken word and slam poets. It is the attribution of human characteristics to inanimate objects or abstract notions. It can also be an imaginary person or creature conceived to represent a non-living thing or idea. rap a genre of African-American music of the 1980s and 1990s in which rhyming lyrics are chanted either to a beat or without accompaniment. Stylistically, rap occupies a gray area among speech, prose, poetry, and song. Rap is derived from the griots (folk poets) of West Africa, Caribbean-style toasting (lyrical chanting) and American blues and jazz. rhyme the matching of final vowel or consonant sounds in two or more words. rhythm the recurrence of accent or stress in lines of verse. simile a figure of speech involving a comparison between unlike things using the words like, as or as though. For example: My love is like a red, red rose. (A Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns) stanza a division or unit of a poem that is repeated in the same form either with similar or identical patterns of rhyme and meter or with variations from one stanza to another. style the way an author chooses words and arranges them in sentences or in lines of dialogue or verse to develop ideas and actions with description, imagery and other literary techniques. syntax the grammatical order of words in a sentence or line of verse or dialogue; the organization of words, phrases and clauses in sentences of prose, verse and dialogue. tempo the rate of speed at which a composition is played, spoken or danced. tone the implied attitude of a writer. 6

7 In the Classroom Before the Performance 1. Verizon s Thinkfinity.org offers various activities and lesson plans in conjunction with National Poetry Month. (Search Lesson Plans for Acrostic Poems. ) Throughout the month of April, assign one or two students as poet of the day. Provide them with descriptions and examples of different forms of poetry. Each student may select a form and write an original poem, which he or she can also illustrate. Students may read their poems aloud to the class. (1.1, 1.3) * 2. Explore the differences between standard written English and colloquial speech in poetry. Some examples might include contrasting the more literary, standard language of Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost with We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks. Discuss the point of view of Brooks poem. She is writing in the voice of the subjects. Do you expect the Mayhem Poets might employ a similar technique? Review the elements of a poem (meter, rhyme, structure, etc.). Then have the class read a poem by an author such as Emily Dickinson, e.e. cummings, Maya Angelou, or Edgar Allan Poe. Show the students a DVD or video of a poetry reading. (See More Resources on next page.) Have the students write their own poems in standard written English and a poem in colloquial speech. Then, have a poetry reading in class of the students work. (1.1, 1.2, 1.3) After the Performance 1. Discuss students impressions of the Mayhem Poets performance in class. What surprised them? What do they remember? What was their favorite part? Have students write a poem in response to one of the pieces they heard in the performance. Consider having the students perform for the class. (1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4) 2. Work with the class to organize a school-wide poetry slam. This is easier than you might think, and it is a great way to energize the entire school community and celebrate the students hard work. As a class, decide whether the slam will be competitive or not. If the event is to be competitive, organize prizes for the winners or participants. Find a person to emcee the program and, if you are going to choose a winner, select a scorekeeper. Often, slam judges are chosen randomly right before the competition begins. Judges can be students, teachers, parents, or staff. Instruct them to score the poetry from (One means this is hardly even a poem and 10 means this is the best thing I ve ever heard. ) You can choose to register performers in advance or have students sign up once they get to the slam. Some great extensions of holding a poetry slam include publishing the poetry that is performed or getting the community involved by sponsoring prizes and/or advertising in a slam program. If you are not ready for a school-wide slam, you can easily host a class slam with students judging each other. (1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4) *Numbers indicate the NJ Core Curriculum Content Standard(s) supported by the activity. Teaching Science Through Theater (Grades 6-12) By Sharon J. Sherman, Ed.D. Education in the arts allows students to refine their perceptual, physical and technical skills. Using theater to teach science is an engaging way for students to show what they know; use their imaginations; demonstrate performance; and practice participation by working and creating with others. In middle school, students learn that all animals and most plants depend on other organisms and their environment to meet their basic needs. We ask students to think about the ways in which organisms interact with ecosystems. They study symbiotic relationships between organisms of different species and look at a variety of relationships. These include producers and consumers, predators and prey, parasites and hosts, scavengers and prey, and decomposers and prey (Science Standard C.1). High school students can analyze the interrelationships and interdependencies among organisms and explain how these relationships contribute to the stability of the ecosystem (Science Standard C.1). A picture play can be used to unite theater and science. Gather several photographs depicting different organisms interacting with ecosystems. Have students work in pairs and give each pair a photo. After studying the photo, they can enact a dramatic work based on their interpretation, expressing personal opinions, thoughts and ideas. You can use video to further develop this concept. NATURE, the PBS series, features two online video clips that allow students to explore the attributes of predators living in the African grasslands. Using video with animation, Survival of the Fastest: Predators and Prey on the African Savannah studies Cheetah vs. Gazelle and Lion vs. Wildebeest. Students learn about the strengths of these predator-prey relationships, the characteristics of effective hunters and qualities that prey have developed for survival ( After viewing the videos, students can research different ecosystems such as desert, jungle, mountain, underground, and ocean. Working in pairs, students should select one predator from the ecosystem and a prey on which it feeds. Producers and consumers, parasites and hosts or scavengers and prey are other selections. Have students act out the relationships that occur in the ecosystem. Sharon J. Sherman, Ed.D., is Dean of the School of Education and Professor of Teacher Education at Rider University in Lawrenceville, N.J. The Teaching Science Through the Arts content of this guide is made possible through the generous support of Roche. VISIT US ONLINE Find additional resources online at artsed.njpac.org 7

8 More Resources Warning: Some of the titles below are intended for mature viewers only. They may contain violence, sexual content, drug use, and/or strong language. CDs may include explicit lyrics. Books for Students and Teachers Aptowicz, Cristin O Keefe. Words in Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam. Soft Skull Press, Elizabeth, Mary. Painless Poetry. Barron s Educational Series, Glazner, Gary. Poetry Slam: The Competitive Art of Performance Poetry. Manic D Press, DVDs and Videos The Poetry Lounge 3: The Power of Performance. Choices, Inc., Not rated. Poetry in Motion. Poetry readings. Homevision, Russell Simmons Presents: Def Poetry. Seasons 1 through 6, available separately. Warner Home Video, CDs Def Jam : History of Hip Hop: Vol. 1. Utv Records, Kurtis Blow Presents the History of Rap: Vol. 1. Rhino/Wea, Websites mayhempoets.com. Website of the Mayhem Poets. thinkfinity.org. Verizon Foundation website for classroom educational resource material. poetryslam.com. Website for Poetry Slam Inc. VISIT US ONLINE Acknowledgments as of 01/18/12 NJPAC Arts Education programs are made possible by the generosity of: Bank of America, The Arts Education Endowment Fund in Honor of Raymond G. Chambers, Leon & Toby Cooperman, The Horizon Foundation for New Jersey, Amy C. Liss, McCrane Foundation, Merck Company Foundation, Albert & Katharine Merck, The Prudential Foundation, PSEG Foundation, Marian & David Rocker, The Sagner Family Foundation, The Star- Ledger/Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation, Surdna Foundation, Verizon, Victoria Foundation, Wells Fargo, John & Suzanne Willian / Goldman Sachs Gives and The Women s Association of NJPAC. Additional support is provided by: Advance Realty, C.R. Bard Foundation, Becton Dickinson and Company, The Frank and Lydia Bergen Foundation, Allen & Joan Bildner, Bloomberg, Ann & Stan Borowiec, Jennifer Chalsty, Chase, Edison Properties, Veronica Goldberg Foundation, Meg & Howard Jacobs, Johnson & Johnson, The MCJ Amelior Foundation, The New Jersey Cultural Trust, The New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Novo Nordisk, Panasonic Corporation of North America, Pechter Foundation, PNC Foundation on behalf of the PNC Grow Up Great program, The Provident Bank Foundation, E. Franklin Robbins Charitable Trust, Roche, TD Charitable Foundation and The Blanche M. & George L. Watts Mountainside Community Foundation. One Center Street Newark, New Jersey Administration: Arts Education Hotline: artseducation@njpac.org Photos courtesy of the Mayhem Poets Photo of Allen Ginsberg c. Allen Ginsberg Estate/Used with permission Photo of Spalding Gray by Clay Walker Writer: Carrie Stetler Editor: Linda Fowler Design: Pierre Sardain 66 Creative, Inc. 66Creative.com NJPAC Guest Reader: Jennifer Frank NJPAC Teacher s Resource Guide Review Committee: Judith Israel Mary Lou Johnston Amy Tenzer Copyright 2012 New Jersey Performing Arts Center All Rights Reserved Find additional resources online at artsed.njpac. org or scan the QR code displayed here. For even more arts integration resources, please go to Thinkfinity.org, the Verizon Foundation s signature digital learning platform, designed to improve educational and literacy achievement. William J. Marino.....Chairman John Schreiber President & Chief Executive Officer Sandra Bowie......Vice President of Arts Education Sanaz Hojreh Assistant Vice President of Arts Education Verushka Wray Spirito Associate Director of Performances Chamie Baldwin Graff Director of Marketing, Arts Education Caitlin Evans Jones..... Director of In-School Programs Jeff Griglak Director of Arts Training Constance Collins Administrative Assistant and Office Manager for Arts Education Laura Ingoglia Editor of Teacher s Resource Guides Linda Fowler Editor of Teacher s Resource Guides 8