Created by Harry Waters, Jr. and Robert Farid Karimi
Performance script written by Robert Farid Karimi and co-directed by Harry Waters, Jr. & Robert Farid Karimi
Socially Engaged Performance/Living Archive Project
A coming out party to celebrate Black queer life, tell secrets we keep to survive, and smack skin to skin in a ritual of survival, Hi5Ve sparks conversations about how do we stay human when society keeps us from touching, playing, and loving? It is a theatrical event that revolves around two bisexual Black men whose fame shot them into double helix paths: baseball player Glenn Burke, the creator of the High Five, and Harry Waters, Jr., New York stage actor and creator of seminal roles in TV and Film. Their respective careers and lifestyles were symptoms of a particular time and place.
Hi5Ve takes the form of a ensemble based play bound for Broadway. Based creatively and anecdotally on Harry Waters Jr.'s life, the script is meant to evoke an event that creates dialogue. Originally imagined as a documentary theater piece about the first openly baseball player Glenn Burke, Hi5Ve transformed into a one man show about Waters’ life in New York City in the 1970s, Hollywood, San Francisco in the 80s and 90s, and everywhere in between. Then something happened. The parallel lives of the two became something deeper for initial collaborators, audiences and participants.
Storycircles and devised processes offered the creators an opportunity to craft a new type of show - a performance where the High Five becomes a ritual for those that survive, a space to spark others to share their histories, queer and otherwise, as an act of collective recognition and healing. As each performance develops, in each location, this theatrical experience serves as a platform for stories of coming out and survival. We hope to work with other partners in each city to develop site specific ways for people to share their untold stories, the secrets we keep, and the private joys to bring to the forefront with this project.
The aim for Hi5Ve is to create a high quality "Broadway bound" performance that serves as a beacon for intergenerational queer communities to share and archive histories. In addition, this event looks to bring queer Black male facing voices to the forefront, thus sparking new lenses in contemporary community awareness. And more. The High Five is a symbol of coming out, surviving AIDS, kiki-ing through adversity and now surviving COVID. Clearly the social engagement element is not an afterthought; it’s the very fabric of the performance - it creates the show, and the show creates more spaces for dialogue to nourish the health of the Black queer communities in the future.