CityLife

Celebrating Contact's urban edge

BLOWN AWAY: Baba Israel

TEN years ago Contact opened its doors as not just a theatre, but a space where young people could come together to create music, drama, spoken word, visual art and dance.

To celebrate, the stories and memories of this first decade are being brought to life in the opening event of Contact’s autumn season, Playback NYC: Playing Back Ten Years Of Contact.

Combining music, dance, freestyle hip-hop and movement, Playback is an improvisational form that transforms the stories of the audience into the art of theatre.

Drawing on the audience’s memories of Contact over the past 10 years, Playback NYC will be ‘a night of celebration, emotion and recollection, rooted in ancient story-telling traditions and tempered by contemporary poetic and musical forms’.

It’s hosted by Contact’s new Artistic Director Baba Israel, the co-founder of Playback NYC, who will be joined by fellow artists Paul McIsaac, Yako 440, Dawn Crandell, and emerging artists from Contact.

Own admission

Baba was, by his own admission, ‘almost literally brought up in the theatre’ in New York, where both his parents were members of the legendary Living Theater. and During those heady, experimental days of the Seventies, when nearly all artistic roads led to New York, the likes of John Lennon and Andy Warhol would be regular visitors to their shows. 

As a director, producer MC and hip-hop artist himself, Baba has toured the US, Europe, South America, Australia and Asia – performing alongside artists such as Outkast, The Roots, Rahzel, Ron Carter, Afrika Bambaataa, Vernon Reid, and Bill Cosby. 

“When I came to Contact in 2005 as a performer,” he recalls, “I was blown away by the community I encountered and returned to New York describing the place as a model venue for cutting edge, diverse and innovative young people’s art, where young people like to feel at home, take risks and grow as people.

“I have worked there as a performer, educator, and director and I can hardly believe I’ve now become the Artistic Director of such a forward thinking organisation!”

Playback NYC is at Contact tonight (September 25). £5, £8. Call 0161 274 0600.