DETROIT—Cleopatra Boy debuts from A Host of People, September 13-28, 2019 at Andy in Detroit.

Cleopatra Boy is an original play that uses the history of Cleopatra combined with music, choreography, bold design, and spoken word to illustrate how women, POC, and LGBTQIA+ individuals in positions of power risk losing control of their own images against the dominance of white patriarchy, resulting in false narratives and misrepresentations. The piece also pulls from restorative justice practices in order to reveal the motives of the Western tellers of Cleopatra’s story and address some of that misinformation, in service of a celebration of women, POC, and queer leaders—past, present, and future.

Devised theater ensemble A Host of People has a reputation for creating theater that is as challenging as it is inviting, and they continue to produce work that celebrates identity, self-expression, and the complex nature of the human experience in this contemporary moment. Their latest original work, Cleopatra Boy, is supported, in part, by New England Foundation for the Arts’ prestigious National Theater Project Creation and Touring Grant. This national recognition comes after previewing Cleopatra Boy at FURY Factory Festival Of Ensemble And Devised Theater in San Francisco, Cleveland Public Theatre’s Test Flight and the 7th Annual Sidewalk Festival Detroit.

Cleopatra Boy is conceived and directed by Sherrine Azab and Jake Hooker with performers Torri Lynn Ashford (voiceover), Aja Salakastar Dier, Morgan Hutson, Costa Kazaleh Sirdenis, Chris Jakob, Eleni Theodora Zaharopoulos; and designers/production team Rebecca Lister (Stage Manager), Dorothy Melander-Dayton (Set & Costume Designer), Chantel Gaidica (Producer & Lighting Designer), Charlie Gaidica (Technical Director), Jake Hooker (Projection Designer) Maddy Rager (Dance Director), Aaron Fox (Assistant Stage Manager), Kamelya Omayma Youssef (Contributing Writer). In addition, the show features original music by Costa Kazaleh Sirdenis and vocal arrangements by Aja Salakastar Dier and Morgan Hutson.

A Host of People is a Detroit-based ensemble theater company creating original work that celebrates complexity, imagination, and the synthesis of seemingly disparate elements—at once epic and intimate, political and personal, poetic and approachable. AHOP exists to create aesthetically rigorous, intellectually challenging theater that is also warm, welcoming, and inspiring to people from all walks of life. The company is led by co-directors and 2018 Kresge Artist Fellows Sherrine Azab and Jake Hooker, whose work has been seen, together and separately, in New York (The Bushwick Starr, The Chocolate Factory Theater, The Kitchen, HERE, Dixon Place, etc.), Berlin (Ida Nowhere, The Lyn-Lin), San Francisco (Intersection for the Arts and Z Below), Cleveland (Cleveland Public Theatre), Chicago (Links Hall), New Orleans (Catapult), Detroit (HomeBase, The Play House, ArtlabJ, The Sidewalk Festival For the Performing Arts, The Jam Handy, Light Box) and elsewhere.

Tickets are available at www.ahostofpeople.org.