Painted Bride Art Center presents James Scruggs’ emotional tour-de-force performance of Disposable Men for two performances only on October 19th and 20th at 8:00 PM as part of the “Performance in the Present Tense” series. Both performances are at the Painted Bride Art Center at 230 Vine Street in Old City, Philadelphia. Tickets at $25, $12.50 for Bride Members, are available at the Painted Bride Art Center box office Tuesday through Saturday from 12:00 PM to 6:00 PM or on the website at www.paintedbride.org.

In a multi-media environment, Disposable Men pairs old-fashioned storytelling with innovative new technology in a solo work that demonstrates the role of the popular media in classifying African American men as “disposable.” With a dose of sharp wit, Scruggs gives life to a variety of characters and circumstances: from a waiter at a theme restaurant that features customized lynchings to a modern-day minstrel who performs at kids’ parties and more. Scruggs draws parallels between Hollywood monsters, such as King Kong, The Wolf Man, and Frankenstein, and African American men in that both are often misunderstood, feared and then killed. The piece makes use of video projection, sculptural video performance, and audience interaction using laser-assisted polling, by which audience members vote on the fate of various characters.

“In 2000, when I first conceived Disposable Men, the phenomenon of the African American male as an endangered species was a constant and recurring thought in my mind. Living in New York City, I was bombarded with signals, clearly indicating that somehow the life of a black man was not as highly regarded as the lives of other men,” said Scruggs, who wrote the work in which he performs. “The goal of Disposable Men is not to point fingers of illicit guilt from the audience, but to flip the script and illustrate in very simple ways what it feels like to be a disposable man and what it feels like to dispose of a man.”

Segments of Disposable Men were developed at the AM Foundation in DUMBO and Brooklyn Arts Exchange in May of 2000, and the final work was ultimately premiered at HERE Arts Center where Scruggs is a resident artist. Disposable Men won the first New York Innovative Theatre Award for Outstanding Solo Performance in 2005. Scruggs has designed video for Division 13’s version of Ionesco’s Journeys Among the Dead and Kristin Marting’s Orpheus, both presented at HERE Art Center. The recipient of a NJ State County on the Arts Fellowship Grant for Artistic Excellence, Scruggs was also one of seven writers selected for the Naked Angels Writers’ Lab, where his ten-minute play Thuggish was performed in February, 2003.

Painted Bride Art Center collaborates with emerging and established artists to create, produce and present innovative work that affirms the intrinsic value of all cultures and celebrates the transformative power of the arts. Through performances and exhibitions, education and outreach, the Bride creates a forum for engagement centered on contemporary social issues.