Bio:
Geraldine Elizabeth Inoa is a writer for theater and television. Her play SCRAPS had its world premiere production at the Flea Theater as part of its 2018/19 season, marking her professional debut. SCRAPS made its West Coast premiere at The Matrix Theatre in Los Angeles during summer 2019.
As a playwright, she is an alumnus of The Public Theater's Emerging Writers Group and the inaugural recipient of The Shonda Rhimes Unsung Voices Playwriting Commission. She is a L. Arnold Weissberg New Play Award finalist, a P73 Playwriting Fellowship finalist, and a twice-named Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference semifinalist. Her work has been developed at the Atlantic Theater Company and the Labyrinth Theater Company.
She holds a B.A. from New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. She resides in Los Angeles with her dog Alfred.
"This ambitious, vibrant new play—written by Geraldine Inoa and directed by Niegel Smith—is performed without an intermission, but it has two distinct, contrasting acts. The first is set on a trash-strewn stoop in Bed-Stuy, four months after the shooting of a black teen-ager from the neighborhood by a white cop. A series of beautifully written scenes involving four people who were close to the young man—played by Roland Lane, Tanyamaria, Alana Raquel Bowers, and Michael Oloyede, all members of the Bats ensemble—powerfully and passionately convey the sadness, anger, tension, and despair of the tragedy." - The New Yorker
"Ms. Inoa, a playwright to watch melds various styles here, moving from the rap opener to a naturalistic first act. The second act...shifts into the unsettling, urgently heightened landscape of Sebastian's nightmare. You can feel the influences here — Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Spike Lee and James Scruggs come to mind — Ms. Inoa nonetheless uses them in service of her own sharp vision." - The New York Times
"A passionate new voice screaming to be heard." - Time Out New York
“The play is gloriously black. It welcomes people from all cultural and racial backgrounds, but lets us know we're guests in this space. The characters in Inoa's Brooklyn aren't there to educate or enlighten white people, they're not there to be mere morality tales, they're there to exist, to be given opportunities they might not be given in real life. They are there to be listened, not argued or conversed with.” - Talkin’ Broadway
LA Press for SCRAPS
“...Magnificently written and directed… We can only hope society can change for the better thanks to such thought provoking work by artist destined for greatness… A show not to miss.” — Broadway World
“Stunning… [a] remarkable ensemble of actors. Miss Inoa's voice isn't one you've heard in the theater before but if we're going to make sense of racism and the violence against innocent black men, hers is an essential voice.” — KCRW 89
“Provocative… Inoa’s language is authentic and often raw, both lofty and nightmarish… Stevie Walker-Webb does deeply committed work directing this increasingly hallucinatory confection…. A forceful play about slavery’s legacy” “This is unforgettable theater” — People’s World
“Bold, timely hotblooded… This important, extraordinary, affecting play, featuring a superb cast of actors given keen direction by Stevie Walker~Webb, must be seen.” — Theatre Notes
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).