Carl Hancock Rux

Poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, recording artist, actor, theater director, radio journalist, United States

Carl Hancock Rux is an American poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, recording artist, actor, theater director, radio journalist, as well as a frequent collaborator in the fields of film, modern dance, and contemporary art. He is also a frequent collaborating artist, appearing on the title track of Gerald Clayton’s album «Life Forum»[1] (Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Instrumental Album[2]) as well as many other jazz and experimental music music projects. His own music has been released internationally on several labels including Sony/550, Thirsty Ear, and Giant Step. 2021 NY Times article identified Rux as «a breathlessly inventive multimedia artist» focused on «art, race, memory and power.»[3] Rux is the author of several books including the Village Voice Literary Prize-winning collection of poetry, Pagan Operetta, the novel, Asphalt, and the Obie Award-winning play, Talk. Mr. Rux is also co-Artistic Director of Mabou Mines, a New York City- based experimental mixed media art and social service company founded in 1970 by David Warrilow, Lee Breuer, Ruth Maleczech, JoAnne Akalaitis, and Philip Glass; Associate Artistic Director/Curator in Residence of Harlem Stage, The Gate House; and a Theater/Performance Editor at The Massachusetts Review, a literary quarterly founded in 1959[4] by a group of professors from Amherst College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.[5][6] Mr. Rux is the recipient of numerous awards including the Doris Duke Award for New Works, the Doris Duke Charitable Fund, the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Prize, the Bessie Award, the Alpert Award in the Arts, and a 2019 Global Change Maker award by WeMakeChange.Org.[7] Mr. Rux’s archives are housed at the Billy Rose Theater Division of the New York Public Library, the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution as well as the Film and Video/Theater and Dance Library of the California Institute of the Arts.

I DREAM A DREAM THAT DREAMS BACK AT ME _ Lincoln Center/Juneteenth 2022.

A multi-disiplicinary installation exploring historical African American slavery and Defining and Studying the Modern African Diaspora; creating an artistic framework for Revolution and Repression as it relates to an African American gaze, past, present, and future.