Hip-Hop Artist to Give Workshop, Performance at UTEP
Last Updated on February 21, 2020 at 12:00 AM
Originally published February 21, 2020
By Daniel Perez
UTEP Communications
A young hip-hop artist will share his perspective of the black experience in America at a free performance of "(I)sland T(rap)" at 7 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 22, 2020, in The University of Texas at El Paso's Studio Theatre in the Fox Fine Arts Center.
Award-winning entertainer Austin Dean Ashford will take his character of Black Ulysses on an odyssey of self-discovery through contemporary America that includes gun violence and oppression. Ashford provides the character with the same weapons he had: lyrical poetry and a ukulele.
The artist also will lead a free workshop from 10 a.m. to noon the same day in the Studio Theatre on the first floor of UTEP’s Fox Fine Arts Center. It is part of the College of Liberal Arts’ Dean’s Speaker Series. This year’s theme is “Spring into Representation.”
The workshop’s goal is to “refine and expand” a person’s appreciation of hip hop and hip-hop theater, and to recognize how these art forms can amplify messages of personal and societal significance. He will advise participants how to use music and poetry to write their own meaningful stories.
“We are delighted to welcome Austin Dean Ashford to UTEP,” said Denis O’Hearn, Ph.D., dean of the College of Liberal Arts. “The Dean's Speaker Series was introduced precisely to encourage new kinds of meetings between scholars across disciplines, and his visit will do precisely that.”
Bianca Taylor, a senior who plans to earn her BFA in theater performance in spring 2020, is the event’s lead organizer. She said she saw Ashford perform at the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (KCACTF) in San Angelo, Texas, in spring 2019, and suggested to department leaders that they invite the performer to visit UTEP in February, which is Black History Month.
“It was important to me as an African-American because I wanted to give people an opportunity to see something different,” Taylor said. “It will allow us to see how we all connect and can make positive change through art. It’s a powerful message.”
Taylor, an El Paso native who graduated in 2015 from El Paso’s Parkland High School, said another important point she wants students to understand is that the multi-talented Ashford continues to work and create as he pursues his doctoral degree in interdisciplinary fine arts from Texas Tech University.
Ashford, who won a KCACTF Citizen Award, earned his bachelor’s degree from Wiley College, in Marshall, Texas, where he excelled as a debater, and his MFA in acting and playwriting at the University of Arkansas.
Adriana Dominguez, Ph.D., assistant professor of theater and director of theatre programs, said it was important for UTEP and the community to hear from such scholars to understand better the need for diverse representation in the arts.
Dominguez praised Taylor for her efforts and thanked the many University programs and departments that sponsored Ashford’s visit.
UTEP’s Women’s and Gender Studies Program, Chicano Studies Program, and the Department of Theatre and Dance collaborated to apply for the Dean’s Speaker Series.
