Baton Rouge SLAM! An Obituary for Summer 2016

ABSTRACT

This performance script created from a critical performance ethnography focuses on how Eclectic Truth Poetry Slam in Baton Rouge, LA, responded to a crisis-filled summer 2016. Summer 2016: political tensions were at a boiling point in a parish flooded with water and lost lives. Fall 2016: over half of all Eclectic Truth slam poems performed by local poets referenced that summer’s successive tragedies. With permission from local poets, I collected ethnographic fieldwork, theatricalized their slam poems, and adapted our co-created interviews to script Baton Rouge SLAM!: An Obituary for Summer 2016 for Baton Rouge audiences and beyond.

KEYWORDS:

• Baton Rouge
• Poetry Slam
• Ethnography
• Performance
• Script

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.