TIMELINE

2001
Colored Ink was formed by the actors alumni of the Brava Theatre Academy, on July 31st, 2001. The Brava Theatre For Women In The Arts becomes the host for Colored Ink productions, as well as the performance group's fiscal sponsor. (www.brava.org)

2002
The first Colored Ink show, titled "Showcases of the New Faces of Theatre" was performed on January 18th and 19th, 2002.

Colored Ink performed "Blackbuster Nights, Short Month/Long History" on Feb 22nd and 23rd, 2002 to a sold out audience.

April 9th, 2002 marks the first time that Colored Ink incorporates hip hop theatre into their performances, resulting in the successful "What If The Streets Had A Heartbeat". This was a performance for the Campo Santos Hybrid Project.

In the months after, Colored Ink begins to outreach their hip hop theatre piece, "What If The Streets Had A Heartbeat" throughout the Bay Area community. Production starts on "Urban Healing, Dealing With How We're Feeling", a series of theatrical events that combine spoken word and hip hop theatre. These performances serve as the foundation for the "Two Generations, One Heartbeat" project. As the name implies, this series was a multi-generational collaboration that brought together the members of Colored Ink with elders in the Bay Area's progressive and highly diverse arts scene, including poets of SF's legendary Beat generation.

Each bi-monthly program in the series highlighted a different issue affecting our community, such as homicides in our area, poverty, lack of opportunity, drugs, and abuse. Our cabaret-style shows, which took place at the Brava Theatre Center, featured an original mix of hip hop, theater, poetry/spoken-word, call-and-response storytelling, dance, and singing with live music. We also included a special "Open Insight" section, in which the audience members interacted with the artists onstage-and in the process, become performers in their own right.

2003-4
During the 2003 and 2004 seasons, with the support of a generous grant from the Columbia Foundation (and with Brava acting as our fiscal sponsor) Colored Ink produced a total of 10 successful shows from the "Two Generations, One Heartbeat" program, which brought in more than 1,500 total audience members. Outside the theatre, we took part in more than 80 outreach performances and led some 30 workshops within the Bay Area community.

2005
The success of Colored Ink's outreach performances in 2005 led to significant collaborations with social service organizations and artistic partners throughout the Bay Area. Notable events:
DVD Release Party of "If the Streets Could SPEAK?"
"The Streets Have Spoken" (Fri & Sat May 20th-21st). Partnership with Venus Rodriquez of the Ella Baker Center; Ray Babylon of Mission Neighborhood Centers.
"Other Side of the Fence" (Friday, Aug 19th). Partnership with Sherlina Najeer of LEJ.
"Our Health is Our Wealth" (Saturday, Aug 20th). Collaboration with Idris Stelly of the Idris Stelly Foundation; Pam Pam of Peacemakers.
New Community Activist partnership: Latifah Simon of California Young Women's Development; Rudy Corpuss of United Playaz; Tony Coleman of Mindeye; and Malakia Parker of Bay Area Police Watch.

More events are co-produced between Colored Ink and community organizations such as Laney College's "Club Knowledge", Eastside Arts Alliance, Strong Seed, Lovelife Foundation, CALSHAKES, BLSAS, Intersection for the Arts, Galileo High School Wellness Center, and Soulography. For example, Colored Ink worked with the San Francisco Public Library on performances and open mic sessions for the Library's afterschool programs.

CI offered two new workshops for youth, "Hip-hop Theatre Through The Speakers" and "Pen 2 Paper" taught by Javier Reyes and Antoine Perry.

2006
Programming continues for "Hip-hop Theatre Through The Speakers" and "Pen 2 Paper". Addition of "Do The Math" and "I Am" workshops.

The performances "Ressurected" and "Scam Fram" debut.

Colored Ink is awarded a $10,000 YFYI Youth Funding Youth Ideas grant for the youth performance project, "Slamming Our System."

A LETTER FROM JAV'

In 1999, I had an idea to start a group of screenwriters called "Colored Ink." The purpose of this group was to back me up and support me whenever I would write scripts. They would be a multicutural group of folks who could write on various topics at the drop of a hat. This was an idea that I thought would take years to put together. Then I had told this idea to a friend of mine by the name of Andre who was a fellow screenwriter and playwright. When I told him, he gave me this funny look and said "That's nice, but why not start a theater group by that same name and concept and start it now." That wasn't a bad idea, but as a 19 year old at the time, my mind couldn't conceive such a thought so soon.

Then in 2001, I returned to Brava after the building had been renovated and got back into the youth theater academy. I saw some old friends and came across some new folks that were mad talented and on my same level of thinking. We had a great teacher by the name of Sarah Mayper who really got us building together as artists and doing work that was relevant to our lives. After she left for Boston before the summer, we then started working on a new youth-run project. The show became chaotic due to us losing our director, cast members, and the rights to the show. So a couple of us became really frustrated.

Throughout that frustration, some how the idea of Colored Ink started to come up again, and so we began to recruit people from the cast that carried over from Sarah's class, as well as some new folks, and began getting more people to collaborate on Colored Ink's vision. We decided that we needed to start our own group and do work that's relevant to our cause; writing from the perspectives of people of color who've been through the trials and tribulations of inner city living, and then communicating those same messages through poetry, spoken word, MCing, and music . So on July 31st, 2001, Colored Ink was born.

Now, it's 2007 and we can't be stopped.

Javier Reyes,
Associate Director of Colored Ink