Geva's Nextstage Season Continues with Reenah Golden in NO CHILD..., Beginning 4/4

Geva Theatre Center's 2013 Fielding Nextstage Season continues with No Child..., by Nilaja Sun. The production begins performances on April 4 and runs in the Fielding Nextstage through April 21.

Actress Reenah Golden transforms into the teachers, students, parents, administrators and janitors who inhabit our schools and shape the future of America. An exuberant and devastatingly funny show about the collaborative power of the arts, and the influence one dynamic, determined teacher can have in altering the lives of her students.

Nilaja Sun is an actor, playwright and teaching artist most known for her play No Child...which debuted Off-Broadway at the Barrow Street Theatre from July 2006 to June 2007. She garnered 21 awards for No Child..., including an Obie Award, a Lucille Lortel Award, two Outer Critics Circle Awards, a Theatre World Award, the Helen Hayes Award, and two NAACP Awards. As an actor, she has appeared on "30 Rock," "Law & Order: SVU," and others. A native of the Lower East Side, she has worked proudly as a teaching artist in New York City since 1998.

Reenah Golden returns to the Fielding Nextstage where she performed No Child... to sold-out houses in 2009. She is a performance poet, spoken word artist, actress, social activist, non-fiction writer, independent broadcast producer and educator. For over 15 years Ms. Golden has been using the power of the Spoken Word publicly to affect social and political change and create new ways of thinking. She teaches and guest lectures regularly at local schools, colleges, universities and cultural institutions and has been invited to perform her poetry nationally and internationally. A native of Rochester and graduate of Rochester Institute of Technology, Ms Golden is co-founder of Kuumba Consultants, an arts-in-education agency dedicated to matching artists of color with youth agencies and schools seeking quality arts and cultural programming. Her Slam Poetry program, "Slam High," has been offered for credit in high school English classes in Rochester for six years. In 2008, Slam High earned a national title and was included in an HBO documentary about the teen spoken word movement, HBO Brave New Voices. Her work has also been featured in academic documentaries and research including work produced for University of Rochester's Warner School of Education, McGill University and the Paulo and Nita Freire Project for Critical Pedagogy. Ms. Golden is the recipient of many awards and grants including a Shoolman Children's Foundation grant and a Partners of the Americas Education and Culture travel grant. She is a two-time New York State Council on the Arts Individual Artist Award winner and the 2006 Writers & Books Teacher of Young People Literary Award. She presents regularly at regional and national conferences on arts-in-education and community activism.

No Child... is directed by Reenah Golden. The creative team includes Apollo Mark Weaver (Scenic Design) and Haldun Morgan (Lighting and Sound Design).

No Child... begins performances on April 4 and runs in the Fielding Nextstage through April 21.

The 2013 Fielding Nextstage Season is supported in part by the Gouvernet Arts Fund at
The Community Foundation.

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