CalArts Center for New Performance

Monty Cole, director of the CNP world premiere of Adrienne Kennedy's "Etta and Ella on the Upper West Side", sits down with CNP Producing Artist Daniel Alexander Jones.

Kaneza Schaal, 2021 Herb Alpert Award in the Arts for Theater recipient, sits down with CNP Producing Artist Daniel Alexander Jones.

Pat Cruz and Juli Crockett discuss the creation of CNP's new audio play, "The George Project: A Liberation Through Hearing", inspired by and adapted from the work of celebrated artist Emilio Cruz.

Award-winning playwright Octavio Solis and director Chi-wang Yang discuss their new collaboration, and Solis’s celebrated body of work rooted in Mexican American culture and community.

In the fall of 2020, not long after Nataki Garrett began her tenure as artistic director of Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF), she and Andrea LeBlanc joined Awele Makeba to discuss "The Carolyn Bryant Project" in conjunction with the work's digital release. Directed by Garrett and co-created with LeBlanc—who also performs the role of Carolyn Bryant—the work conjures the specter of Emmett Till's murder to create a nightmarish reverie on white violence and silence in America. As they discuss the project's creation, they share critical and personal reflections on a creative process that took shape in the Obama era, through its most recent presentation following a summer of surgent Black Lives Matter protests.

The two-time Emmy Award-winner — and current CalArts faculty — Ron Cephas Jones speaks in-depth about his process as an actor. Jones shares his love of jazz, rhythm and language, and talks of nights at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, of the connections between Duke Ellington, William Shakespeare, August Wilson, and more.

For this special preview episode, we invited CNP’s 2020/21 Resident Artist Daniel Alexander Jones to meet up with two next-generation artists and students at CalArts.