Last summer the Baton Rouge community faced flooding, the fatal police shooting of Alton Sterling and the murders of three of its police officers, Deputy Brad Garafola, Officer Matthew Gerald and Corporal Montrell Jackson.
Performance studies PhD student and director Joshua Hamzehee invites community members to reflect on these events and see how the city’s past, present and future intertwine in his latest show, “Baton Rouge SLAM!: An Obituary for Summer 2016.”
The first week Hamzehee moved to Baton Rouge, the Sterling shooting occurred. After spending time in Florida, he returned to find the city flooded.
Actively involved in the Capital City’s slam poetry community, Hamzehee noticed that many of the poems he heard performed reflected these events. He was able to work with several of the poets to turn their works into a theatrical event.
The show is about a slam poetry community, but it is not a slam poem event, Hamzehee said. He’s turned poems into five-minute scenes with actors and reworked individual conversations he’s had with each of the poets to invoke a new perspective on pervasive subjects.
For instance, one cast member’s slam poem, “Timeline Trauma,” focused on her response to current events through her Twitter feed. Together she and Hamzehee were able to restructure the poem into a scene where the main character goes through a maze of different tragic events — “a gamification of trauma,” he said. 
Hamzehee hopes this form of remixing — creating a new story while still holding true to the author’s intent — keeps viewers interested, he said.
Viewers of the show will be reminded of their place in the community as soon as they step through the door, when they’ll indicate where they live on a map of Baton Rouge. Throughout the show, the locations of various events will be added to the map, revealing different areas of the city where some audience members may be disconnected.
While the show centers on heavy topics, Hamzehee worked with the cast to make sure the audience doesn’t leave the theatre feeling drained. They intentionally deviated from recreating traumatic events, instead focusing on how the community stays hopeful in the wake of tragedy, he said.
Even though the show takes place in 2016, its themes could not be more relevant in the present, Hamzehee said.
“Everything they’re saying is so prophetic to the hurricane that’s happening now and the stuff that’s happened with Charlottesville,”  he said. “It’s not so much a show about last year anymore. It’s a show about this year and next year as well.” 
By hearing other’s stories, Hamzehee hopes viewers walk away from the show with a better understanding of the city they live in and its different layers, he said.
The show runs Sept. 13 through Sept.16 at 7:30 p.m. and Sept. 17 at 2:30 p.m. in the HopKins Black Box Theater in 137 Coates Hall. Admission is free, but donations will be accepted at the door.

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Kim Nguyen

Participants of "Baton Rouge SLAM! An Obituary for Summer 2016" rehearse at the Hopkins Black Box Theater on Sept. 9, 2017.