Carl Hancock Rux

Carl Hancock Rux
Carl Hancock Rux, Harlem Stage Gala, May 2012
Born	Carl Stephen Hancock New York City, U.S.
Occupation	Poet playwright novelist essayist recording artist actor director conceptual multimedia installation artist curator
Literary movement	Afro-Futurism, speculative and dystopian fiction
Notable works	Asphalt, Rux Revue, Talk, Pagan Operetta
Notable awards	Alpert Award in the Arts, NYFA Prize, Village Voice Literary prize, Obie Award, Bessie Award, (BAX) Arts & Artists in Progress Award
Website
www.carlhancockrux.com

Carl Hancock Rux () is an award-winning American poet, dramatist, librettist, novelist, essayist, recording artist, curator, theater director, radio journalist, visual artist, and social activist. Mr. Rux is Co-Artistic Director of Mabou Mines(an award-winning New York City-based experimental mixed media art company founded in 1970 by Lee Breuer, Ruth Maleczech, JoAnne Akalaitis, and Philip Glass, among others ); Associate Artistic Director/Mellon Foundation Curator in Residence of Harlem Stage The Gate House; resident artist at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts; frequently works with The Billie Holiday Theater, (recipient of the 2021 National Medal of Arts); and he is the multidisciplinary editor of The Mass. Review (recipient of 2021 Whiting Award Magazine Prize). He is the author of the collection of poetry, Pagan Operetta, the novel, Asphalt, and the OBIE award-winning play Talk; and is a noted musician, having recorded several albums since the release of his critically acclaimed debut, "Rux Revue" on Sony/550, exploring combinations of poetry, soul, rock, hip-hop, jazz, and folk blues. His mixed media works have been included in the Uptown Triennale at the Wallach Gallery, Park Avenue Armory, and London's Serpentine Gallery. Mr. Rux also has the distinct honor of having created the lead role in The Temptation of St. Anthony (directed by Robert Wilson and composed by Bernice Johnson Reagon), the first all-African-American opera to premiere at the Paris Opera.

Early life

Born Carl Stephen Hancock in Harlem, New York,[1] Hancock's biological mother, Carol Jean Hancock, was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and institutionalized shortly after the illegitimate birth of her firstborn child, Hancock's older brother Ralph. Eleven years later, while his mother was under the care of a New York City psychiatric institution, she became pregnant with her second son, Carl; the identity of his biological father remains unknown. He was placed under the guardianship of his maternal grandmother, Geneva Hancock (née Rux), who died of liver cirrhosis due to alcoholism when he was four years old. Several days would pass before neighbors discovered the child had been surviving on his own, alone in the apartment with the corpse of his deceased grandmother, whom he assumed was sleeping.[2] Placed in the New York City foster care system, he eventually came under the legal guardianship of his great uncle James Henry Rux and his wife Arsula (née Cottrell) Rux and was raised in the Highbridge neighborhood of the Bronx.

Career

Theater and Performance Art

While working as a New York City Social Work Trainer, Rux began his professional artistic career as a playwright and, later, a spoken word and performance artist and a frequent collaborator in various interdisciplinary mediums. Influenced by the Lower East Side poetry and experimental theater scene, Rux worked with artists including Sekou Sundiata, Laurie Carlos, Robbie McCauley, Jane Comfort, and Urban Bush Women, creating work primarily at Performance Space 122), Judson Church, St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery, The Kitchen, Threadwaxing Space and the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. He would eventually become the curator and co-host (along with its founder,Miguel Algarin, of the radio show Live From The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, which aired for several years on WBAI. Included in the poetry anthology Aloud, Voices From the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, winner of the 1994 American Book Award. Rux also performed in Europe, West Africa, Indonesia, and Scandinavia as a collaborator with artists including Vernon Reid, Toshi Reagon, Nona Hendryx, Carrie Mae Weems as well as the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater and Urban Bush Women. Frequently featured on National Public Radio, the Village Voice named him one of “Eight Writers on the Verge of Impacting the Literary Landscape,” and the New York Times Magazine selected him as “One of Thirty Artists Under the Age of Thirty Most Likely to Influence Culture Over the Next Thirty Years,” describing him as "a breathlessly inventive multimedia artist" focused on "art, race, memory, and power."

=Poetry, Fiction, Drama

Widely anthologized, Rux's first book of poetry, Pagan Operetta, received the Village Voice Literary prize and was featured on the weekly's cover story: "Eight Writers on the Verge of (Impacting) the Literary Landscape." Rux is the author of the novel Asphalt and the author of several plays. His most notable play is the Obie award-winning play Talk (published by TCG), which premiered at the Joseph Papp Public Theater, starring Anthony Mackie, Reg E. Cathey, Karen Kandel, Maria Tucci, John Seitz, and James Himelsbach.

Recording Artist

Discovered by Sony 550 President Polly Anthony, Rux released his debut CD Rux Revue recorded and produced in Los Angeles by the Dust Brothers, Tom Rothrock, and Rob Schnapf. Rux recorded a follow-up album, Apothecary Rx, selected by French writer Phillippe Robert in the 2008 publication "Great Black Music": an exhaustive tribute of 110 American albums by African American artists. His third studio CD, Good Bread Alley, was released by Thirsty Ear Records, and his fourth, "Homeostasis" (CD Baby), was released in May 2013. He has also released a mixed tape of a live performance at Joe's Pub (where he was the inaugural performer), "Anima/Animus".

Journalism/Editor

Rux has been published as a contributing writer in numerous journals, catalogs, anthologies, and magazines, including Interview magazine, Essence magazine, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, aRude Magazine, Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art (founded by fellow art critics Okwui Enwezor, Chika Okeke-Agulu and Salah Hassan) and American Theater Magazine and is currently the Multidisciplinary Editor of The Massachusetts Review.

Dance/Opera

Rux has written text, music, and or performed in a proportionate number of works with various dance companies, including the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater; Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company; Jane Comfort & Co., Ronald K. Brown's "Evidence"; Urban Bush Women and Paz Tanjiquio's "Topaz Arts" dance theater, among others. He also originated the title role ( as lead performer) in the folk opera production of The Temptation of St. Anthony, based on the Gustave Flaubert novel, directed by Robert Wilson with book, libretto, and music by Bernice Johnson Reagon and costumes by Geoffrey Holder. The production debuted as part of the Ruhr Triennale festival in Duisburg, Germany, with subsequent performances at the Greek Theater in Siracusa, Italy; the Festival di Peralada in Peralada, Spain; the Palacio de Festivales de Cantabria in Santander, Spain; Sadler's Wells in London, Great Britain; the Teatro Piccinni in Bari, Italy; the Het Muziektheater in Amsterdam, Netherlands; the Teatro Arriaga in Bilbao and the Teatro Espanol in Madrid, Spain. The opera made its American premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music / BAM Next Wave Festival in October 2004 and official "world premiere" at the Paris Opera, becoming the first all-African-American opera to perform on its stage since the inauguration of the Académie Nationale de Musique - Théâtre de l'Opéra. Combining both his dramatic training and dance movement into his performance, the American press described Rux's performance as having "phenomenal charisma and supreme physical expressiveness...(achieving) a near-iconic power, equally evoking El Greco's saints in extremis and images of civil rights protesters besieged by fire hoses." Rux has also appeared as an actor in several plays, performance and dance theater works as well as films; and worked as librettist for several operas.

Radio

Rux was the host and artistic programming director of the WBAI radio show, Live from The Nuyorican Poets Cafe; contributing correspondent for XM radio's The Bob Edwards Show and frequent guest host on WNYC as well as NPR. He co-wrote and performed in the national touring production of NPR Presents Water±, directed by Kenny Leon.

Academia

Rux is formally the Head of the MFA Writing for Performance Program at the California Institute of the Arts and has taught and or been an artist in residence at Brown University, Yale University,Hollins University, UMass Amherst, Duke University, Stanford University, University of Iowa, University of Wisconsin at Madison, Eugene Lang and The New School, among others.

Activism

Rux joined New Yorkers Against Fracking, organized by singer Natalie Merchant, calling for a fracking ban on natural gas drilling using hydraulic fracturing. A concert featuring Rux, Merchant, actors Mark Ruffalo and Melissa Leo and musicians Joan Osborne, Tracy Bonham, Toshi Reagon, Citizen Cope, Meshell Ndegeocello and numerous others was held in Albany, N.Y.,.

Carl Rux worked with the Fort Greene Association and New York philanthropist Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel to erect a cultural medallion at the Carlton Avenue home where novelist Richard Wright lived and penned his seminal work, Native Son.

Awards/Recognitions

Rux is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Alpert Award in the Arts, the Doris Duke Award for New Works, the Doris Duke Charitable Fund, the New York Foundation for the Arts Prize, the Bessie Award; and a Global Change Maker award by WeMakeChange.Org as well as shortlisted for the United States Artists Fellowship and a finalist in the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

His 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.

Personal life

Rux's great uncle, Rev. Marcellus Carlyle Rux (January 8, 1882 - January 5, 1948), was a graduate of Virginia Union University and principal of The Keysville Mission Industrial School (later changed to The Bluestone Harmony Academic and Industrial School), a private school founded in 1898 by several African-American Baptist churches in Keysville, Virginia at a time when education for African-Americans was scarce to non-existent. The post-Civil War school was one of the first Black boarding schools in the nation and once boasted the largest enrollment of any black boarding school in the East, sending many of its graduates on to college. For the first five years, Marcellus Carlyle Rux was a teacher in the institution. Such was the record he made that he was promoted to the principalship in 1917. Under his administration, the school reached its highest enrollment and had its greatest period of prosperity. The school's still-existent dormitory and President's dwelling are eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). Marcellus Carlyle Rux is listed in History of the American Negro and his Institutions.