James Scruggs' TICKETS TO MANHOOD at Dixon Place: NYC experimental theatre for artists literary events reading events dance art

Performed by DOUGLAS ALLEN, MAXIMILIANO BALDUZZI, SPENCER SCOTT BARROS, GERARD JOSEPH and JAMES SCRUGGS

What makes a man a man today? How do boys grow into men? America has become more and more urbanized: gang violence, drug addiction and imprisonment are often as much a boy's rite of passage as religion, military service and marriage once were. The men in Tickets To Manhood examine the choices that boys make as they mature into men. But these men don't apologize for their choices: they dive deep into them, and hold up the results for all the world to see. Their humorous and poignant stories offer a glimpse into the events that transformed them and how that metamorphosis occurred.

PLUS: a special post-performance discussion about healthy rites of passage that are available to boys on Saturday, July 23rd with guests Boysen Hodgson, Commuincations Director for the ManKind Prject USA, Rev. Ian White Maher, editor of the anti-racist journal Birthrights: Confronting the Entitlements of White Skin, Kevin McGruder, professor of African and African-American Studies at Lehman College and Clifford B. Simmons, Executive Director of Blue Nile Passage, Inc.

JAMES SCRUGGS was awarded a Franklin Furnace grant and a New Jersey State Council on the Arts Grant. His show, Disposable Men, which was performed at HERE, received the Bel Geddes Grant and has toured to 7Stages in Atlanta and Painted Bride in Philadelphia. (RUS)H, another collaboration with Kristin Marting, premiered at 3LD Art and Technology Center, NYC. In 2010 a reading of his work Touchscape, was staged at Harlem Stage's The Gatehouse, followed by a 3-week residency at The Baryshnikov Arts Center and a WIP showing at Dixon Place.

TICKETS TO MANHOOD is commissioned and first presented by Dixon Place with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency, and the City of New York Department of Cultural Affairs; and with private funds from The Peg Santvoord Foundation.