Party People

The new york premiere of Universe's exciting musical play

First premiering at Berkeley Rep in 2014, award-winning ensemble Universes bring their highly popular musical play to New York this fall for a limited run. A time-relevant exploration into the often fraught relationship between the original Black Panthers and the Young Lords civil rights groups, the action takes place at an art gallery where the two movements hold one of their annual reunions. This exciting and innovative work melds rap, hip hop and Latin beats, and comes to New York in time for the 50th anniversary of the Black Panthers.

What is it about?

The brain child of Liesl Thomas, Party People takes a multi-dimensional look at the sometimes divisive and tense relationships between the Black Panthers and Latin-American civil rights movement Young Lords, as they join up for a gallery exhibition staged by two counter-culturalists. Like a lot of family reunions, there are underlying tensions, suspicions and often broken relationships between people from the two groups.Party People sets out to examine these schisms in depth, with inter-generational divides and long-festering rivalries taking center stage. Based on dozens of interviews from real-life members of both groups, we find that resentment can burrow deep in one's psyche for 30-something years, and the reunions give an opportunity to air out differences and disagreements that otherwise would lay dormant.

Although in recent years the legacy of the now defunct Black Panthers has seen a revival thanks to the BLM movement following deaths of black men by police, less is known widely about the Young Lords. Starting out in Chicago as a Puerto Rican turf gang in the Sixties, they quickly moved towards civil rights following the city's controversial "Keep Chicago clean" initiative, which saw the forced removal of 35 Puerto Rican families from certain areas. The Young Lords set out to demonstrate against this by taking over a public park, which was slated to host an exclusive tennis court. By camping out on the land for a week, the company U-turned on its plans, and the area became a designated People's Park.