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“Caleb Calypso and the Midnight Marauders,” a new play in progress, will tell a tale of “smarter soldiers” in a fictional U.S. Army on March 20-21 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“Caleb Calypso and the Midnight Marauders,” a new play in progress, will tell a tale of “smarter soldiers” in a fictional U.S. Army on March 20-21 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Staged readings of the evolving work will be free to the public both nights at 8 p.m. in Gerrard Hall on Cameron Avenue.

A third performance will be at 8 p.m. March 27 in Room 103 of the Farrison-Newton Community Building at North Carolina Central University in Durham, a part of NCCU’s New Play Project.

“Caleb Calypso,” written by Durham playwright and educator Howard L. Craft, will be part of the 2008-2009 Process Series at UNC. The series presents works in progress to illuminate ways in which artistic ideas take form. It seeks to follow artists and performers as they bring new works to the public. Craft will participate in post-show discussions with the audience to gauge reaction to his still-unfolding work.

The performances also will be part of The Gender Project at UNC, the 2008-09 Carolina Creative Campus initiative. The project employs the arts to stimulate discussion about pertinent issues. The readings will be presented by UNC’s Office of the Executive Director for the Arts, communication studies department and NCCU’s theater department.

“We are collaborating with the theater department at North Carolina Central University for the first time,” said UNC artist in residence Joseph Megel, who directs The Process Series and will direct the “Caleb Calypso” readings. “This collaboration among institutions, communities, artists, professors and students represents a broadening commitment to the creation of art and the sharing of the process.”

“Caleb Calypso” is set in a U.S. Army barracks in Bamberg, Germany, in the hours leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall. The play imagines a changing Army, invested in so-called smarter soldiers – soldiers who manipulate sophisticated information and weapons systems.

As one such solider contemplates re-enlistment, he confronts his ideas of manhood and service and how they are interpreted by the other young men with whom he serves. Exploring issues of race, class, regionalism and homophobia in today’s Army, “Caleb Calypso” is a story about a young man attempting to understand himself in a world that is changing faster than he can come to attention and salute.

Craft called having “Caleb Calypso” featured in The Process Series “an extraordinary experience for me. It has allowed me to push my play in new and exciting directions, to places I did not expect the work to go.”

The NCCU theater department said the collaboration represents another step forward in a different kind of creative process.

Johnny B. Alston, chair of NCCU’s theater department, said that artistic collaboration can be a powerful engine that helps drive the creative process.

“It produces diversity, clarity, originality and a richness of endeavor resulting in stunning and potent gifts for us all,” he said. “We hope that our cooperative effort with UNC’s communication studies department will serve to enhance The Process Series.”

Seating for the UNC performances of “Caleb Calypso and the Midnight Marauders” is general admission. At the NCCU performance, seating will be available on a first-come, first-served basis. To reserve seats for the NCCU performance, contact Karen Dacons-Brock at kbrock@nccu.edu or (919) 530-7340.

For more about Craft, visit http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/645506.html.

Process Series contact:
Joseph Megel, (919) 843-7067, megel@email.unc.edu
News Services contact: LJ Toler, (919) 962-8589

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