Culture & Community | Hamden | Long Wharf Theatre | Arts & Culture | The Space Ballroom
Saddi Khali Photo Courtesy of UNIVERSES.
Spoken word, deep and layered enough to sink into a person's bones. Stomping feet, heartbeat-like and transformed percussion beneath roaring vocals. Hip-hop and gospel-infused dance and dialogue that folds in story, song, and current events. A blessing and a meditation and a concert, all rolled into one.
It's a homecoming that Steven Sapp and Mildred Ruiz Sapp didn't see coming, two decades in the making.
Welcome to Live From The Edge, a production from UNIVERSES that will close out Long Wharf Theatre's 2022-2023 season at the Space Ballroom in Hamden this spring. A mash up of the performance group’s decades-long work, the show integrates spoken word and poetry, music and movement, hip-hop, gospel, and evolving history into a show. It marks Long Wharf’s first full-length run after leaving its longtime Sargent Drive home, which closed after a reading of Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel’s play Flying Bird’s Diary last October.
"We're building toward something. We're laying the groundwork. This is kind of the pilot," said Associate Artistic Director Rachel Alderman in an interview at Long Wharf's new 70 Audubon St. offices Wednesday. "It's not that every time [we have a performance] we're gonna go to a concert venue. This was the right choice for this show. This was bespoke … and when we find the right partner, it clicks.”
“We welcome them with open arms,” said Premier Concerts / Manic Presents President and venue promoter Keith Mahler, whose company owns and runs the Space Ballroom. He added that he’s been attending Long Wharf shows for roughly four decades, and is excited to be part of the theater’s next chapter. “And we hope this turns into a yearly type programming event.”
Performances run Thursday through Sunday, April 27 through May 21, at the Space Ballroom on 295 Treadwell St. in Hamden. Ticket sales open to Long Wharf Theatre members on January 9 and the general public on January 30. More information is available at the theater's website.
For both UNIVERSES and for the theater, it marks a full-circle moment. Born in New York almost three decades ago, UNIVERSES is the brainchild of Sapp and Ruiz-Sapp, who are also among the founders of The POINT Community Development Corporation in the South Bronx and the current playwrights in residence at Long Wharf.
Pieced together from multiple performances, Live From The Edge is “like the greatest hits of their most amazing work,” Alderman said. As the theater ventured into itinerancy, she said, it felt right for the moment. During its month-long run, the performance will seat a maximum of 130 people per night.
It is also bringing UNIVERSES back to its roots, as it introduces Long Wharf to a wider segment of the greater New Haven community. In the 1990s, Sapp and Ruiz-Sapp found an early home in New York’s clubs and cafes, including the storied Nuyorican Poets Cafe nestled on the city’s Lower East Side. Then in 2002, the company made its New Haven debut, during an open mic night from the then-fledgling Bregamos Community Theater.
Thursday morning, Bregamos founder Rafael Ramos said he can still remember that night vividly. In those days, Bregamos wasn’t yet a brick-and-mortar space but an open mic night and performance collective, hosted in the back room of BAR downtown. After meeting artist and UNIVERSES member Flaco Navaja in New York, Ramos brought the group to New Haven through a program called the “Metro-North Connection.” He was moved by the show.
“UNIVERSES was one of the first groups that came up, and they did poetry, acting, rap and storytelling all in one,” he said in a phone call Thursday morning. “And for New Haven at the time, it was very cutting edge.”
Frances Pollitt Photo Courtesy of UNIVERSES.
Sapp never forgot about the performance either—or about Ramos. In the intervening years, he and Ruiz-Sapp grew UNIVERSES with a rotating cast of playwrights and performers, returning to New Haven for the International Festival of Arts & Ideas while also growing their footprint far beyond New York. In New Haven. Ramos advocated for social justice through the arts and became one of the city’s most dogged housing inspectors.
When Sapp started looking at venues and visited Bregamos this year, “It was like seeing family,” he said. “That's community to us … It feels like a place where we would have went to as kids. It feels like we're coming to a space that has been blessed.”
He added that Bregamos, which sits in the heart of Fair Haven, reminds him in many ways of The Point, and of the places he and Ruiz-Sapp frequented as young people. Meanwhile, the Space Ballroom feels like many of the clubs that UNIVERSES got its start in almost three decades ago. Together, the spaces have created a container for a production that he, Ruiz-Sapp and their collaborators are excited for New Haven to see.
“You know what excites me?” said Sapp by phone Thursday afternoon. “When I saw Rafael and we were talking, and he was like, ‘Wow, you remembered me and you guys are coming back here,’ I remember how important that was to me. We're supposed to be here. We're supposed to be in the community this way.”
It’s just one of the reasons the timing feels like kismet, Alderman said. For the past three years, Sapp and Ruiz-Sapp have been Long Wharf’s Mellon Foundation playwrights-in-residence, a position that went completely remote after Covid-19 hit New Haven. Because of the pandemic’s timing, the two never had the chance to share space with Long Wharf staff, the budding playwrights with whom they worked, or with New Haven audiences. Now, they will.
"It was a many-tentacled residency, and this is the culmination of that partnership," Alderman said. "We're really excited to have them on the ground, working with our staff. When they come here, we're hoping to have other ways that people can meet with them, collaborate with them, in person. It'll be a great celebration."
Before the work closes out the season, Long Wharf will also be premiering I AM: Muslim American, a New Haven Play Project film from Halima Flynn and writer Aaliyah Miller inspired by the stories of Muslim families living in Connecticut. That will likely come in March, Alderman said. After Live From The Edge has ended, Long Wharf will roll out its end-of-year gala at the John Lyman Center for the Performing Arts at Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU).
Last month, Long Wharf announced its official partnership with the university, the first of many collaborations the theater has hinted at in the last several months. Alderman said that there are a few other partnerships and performances in the pipeline, but that the theater is not yet ready to disclose them. For now, staff are focusing on the months ahead—and giving themselves space to dream into the future, she said.
“The joy has been in the exploration,” she said. “Lucky for us, Steve and Mills [Mildred] are a great partner in that, because they take joy in the same exploration. They're a perfect team for us to work on this within this moment.”
Learn more about Long Wharf Theatre here. Learn more about UNIVERSES here. Learn more about the Space Ballroom here.