Carl Hancock Rux

Artist Description

Carl Hancock Rux is a multi-disciplinary writer and author of the critically-acclaimed novel, Asphalt (Simon & Schuster/Washington Square Press), the Village Voice Literary prize-winning collection of poetry, Pagan Operetta (Fly By Night/Autonomedia Press), and the OBIE award-winning play, Talk (published by TCG press/voted by Time Out as one of the top ten plays of 2002). Rux's poetry, fiction, plays and essays have been published in numerous anthologies and journals here and abroa. Rux has been a contributing writer for several magazines and periodicals including Interview, Essence, Honey, Manhattan File, aRUDE, NKA Journal Of Contemporary African Art, Brooklyn Bridge and American Theater magazine. His collaborations include commissioned text and performances with several performing artists and dance companies including The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Urban Bush Women, Marlies Yearby's Movin' Spirits Dance Theater, Jane Comfort & Co., and the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Co. among others.

Rux originated the title role in the Robert Wilson/Bernice Johnson Reagon opera The Temptation of St. Anthony (based on the Gustave Flaubert novel) which played to critical and popular acclaim throughout Europe, had its world premiere at the Paris Opera and received critical acclaim for its American premiere at the BAM Next Wave festival. Carl Hancock Rux is the African Diasporic Artist in Residence at the Miami Perfoming Arts Center where he has been commissioned to create the libretto for the opera; MAKANDAL concerning a Haitian slave uprising with music by Daniel Bernard Roumain and scenic design by Haitian artist Edouard Duvall Carrie. The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College (Annandale-on-Hudson) received a 2006 Rockefeller grant to commission Rux's The Blackamoor Angel (music by composer Deirdre Murray) a new opera in three acts based on the life and macabre death of ex-slave Angelo Soliman, royal tutor, member of the elite in 18th century Vienna, companion of Mozart and Holy Roman Emporer Joseph II, and Grand Master of the Masonic Lodge. He is also the author of numerous plays and performance works, including GENEVA COTTRELL WAITING FOR THE DOG TO DIE and THE NO BLACK MALE SHOW. Rux Revue (Sony/Epic), his critically-acclaimed first CD, was voted one of the top ten alternative music CD’s of 1998 (New York Times/Year In Music), his second CD Apothecary Rx is available on Giant Step records, and his most recent, "Good Bread Alley" is available from Thirsty Ear Music.

Mr. Rux has been a guest host on WNYC's Soundcheck and an occassional host on WNPR, as well as a contributing commentator on XM radio’s The Bob Edwards Show, and is the narrator and co-author of the radio documentary "Walt Whitman: Songs of Myself" (Elena Park/Curtis Fox producers), awarded the 2006 New York Press Club Journalism Award for Entertainment News. At present, he is completing his second novel, Negerplastik, based on the true story of an Afrocentric circus troupe in Germany’s Weimar republic. Carl Hancock Rux is the recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Prize; the NYFA Gregory Millard Playwright in Residence Fellow; the NEA/TCG Playwright in Residence Fellow; the Bessie Schomburg award;the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, and the 2005 Brooklyn Arts Exchange BAX10 Arts & Artists in Progress Award. He is the Head of the MFA Writing for Performance Program at California Institute for the Arts.