March 26, 2009

Artist will rap 'Canterbury Tales' at Purdue

The performance, which is free and open to the public, is 5:30 p.m. in the Krannert Auditorium. In addition to the event, Brinkman also will meet with Purdue students during a rap-writing workshop earlier in the day, says Robyn Malo, a Purdue assistant professor of English. Students interested in the rap-writing workshop must pre-register by e-mailing Malo at rmalo@purdue.edu. This session, which is co-presented by the Black Cultural Center, is limited to 25 students.

Brinkman's one-man hip-hop theater show is based on Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales." Brinkman, who is from Vancouver, also is a member of the hip-hop group Mud Sun. His latest project, "The Rap Guide to Evolution," which is celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, will be on tour in the United Kingdom and North America throughout 2009.

"The Rap Canterbury Tales" tells the stories of the Pardoner, the Miller and the Wife of Bath through the medium of rap and physical theatre. In 2005, the Cambridge University English Department sponsored Brinkman on a secondary schools tour in the United Kingdom. Since then he has toured hundreds of educational venues, including high schools, colleges and universities, such as Harvard, Cambridge and Wellesley.

The event is funded by Purdue's Department of English, the comparative literature program, the College of Liberal Arts Engagement Office, and is promoted with the help of the Black Cultural Center, Medieval Renaissance Studies, and Comitatus, the Medieval and Renaissance Graduate student organization. The program also has been made possible through a matching grant from the Indiana Humanities Council in cooperation with the National Endowment for the Humanities. It is part of the university's Imagining America initiative. Imagining America is a consortium of colleges and universities that supports public scholarship and practice. The initiative's mission is to strengthen the public role and democratic purposes of the humanities, arts and design.

Writer: Amy Patterson Neubert, 765-494-9723, apatterson@purdue.edu

Source: Robyn Malo, 765-496-2810, rmalo@purdue.edu

Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu

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