WOEFULLY SILENT

Yep.  We’ve been woefully silent here in blogsville for too many months!  It’s not because nothing is going on.  It’s the opposite.  Our too-few hours in the day have been getting gobbled up by three, yeah THREE major works in Development, PreProduction & Production: ROOFLESS our ground-breaking musical which is breaking more new ground as we re-construct it as a limited series for screen; a 20-year long revamp our first original musical, A SONG OF GREENWOOD (based on the events surrounding the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921) which is nearing completion and starting to make the “pitching” rounds to potential funders, producers, supporters, and potential cast & crew; and lastly, HOTFOOT our first film project, starring the incomparable international dance star, Lil Buck.

If you think THAT was an overly-weighty run-on sentence, you should see our daily to-do lists. 🤣

If you’ve actually sought out this blog page and read this post in whole, we have undying admiration for your support of our werkz!  Seriously tho!  Please stay tuned and keep your ear to the ground as these projects will hopefully, albiet gradually, come into the public light over the next 18-24 months.

Upcoming tings:
- A Song of Greenwood website launch. (In anticipation of a Centennial performance of some sort... still in hush hush mode.)

- Some oft-asked-about LoJo casting opportunities in the Tulsa area & possibly NYC/LA for development projects: new score demos, development readings for ASOG & ROOFLESS the Series.

- Additionally, we’ll be working with our IDENTITY SCHOOL of ACTING family (home of Letitia Wright, John Boyega,  & Malachi Kirby — aka Shuri, Finn & Kunta Kinte — & many other incredible actors) as they make their indelible mark on Hollywood with the premiere year-end “Filmcase” festival which will showcase and celebrate the first group of alums from the award-winning school’s initial year of operation in Los Angeles. 

More frequent updates can be found on our social media sites:

2019 "ROOFLESS" NEWS COMING SOON!

It's been around two years since we last officially reported on the progress of our award-winning, flagship musical Roofless.

This whole time Tagz, freed from the libretto pages, has been flying around the LoJoLab ("levibreaking" as he likes to call it) inspiring, imbuing and sometimes even irritating our creative process.  Since the 2018 Yuletide first started its slow burn, our mercurial lil homie has been champing at the proverbial bit wanting to unwrap the latest news for all our friends, fam, fans & followers.

Yup!  We've got a little bit of news, folks.

Progress has been silently and tenaciously taking place under the cover of our self-imposed radio silence.  I'm sure it will be an unexpected surprise to most.  We'll do the official unwrap of the news in the first week of January!  Now if we can just keep Tagz under control for a few more days!!!   

Where's that damn Flyness Swatter?

S/O to @the_photographer_j07 and models @stephenchristopher, the brilliant @magor15 and my sorely-missed TuTchTmuse @Harry Uzoka whose work inspired and helped bring this latest Tagz character concept art to life for the holidays.  Roofless concept art, as always, by TuTchT IMAGING (yup, that's us too.)

ROOFLESS ANNOUNCEMENTS COMING

It's no coincidence that ROOFLESS characters Marquee and Lil Man were pulleyed down onto the TuTchT Imaging IG page last week.  They dangled their limbs and their dopetitude over the cryptic hashtags "#steadybuilding and #raisingroofs."  Yup, 'twas indeed a bit of visual foreshadowing.  Nearly 2 years of feverish work has been silently going on down in the depths of the LoJoLab since our last Broadway trip, table reading & strategy session with the esteemed Mr Schwartz of Oz and ahhs. 

We'll have some updates and announcements before year's end. Till then, the h's of our ubiquitous "Shhhhhhhhhh" still encircle and mask our goings-on.

You can keep up with LoJo Announcements when they drop on our

LoJoWERKz INSTAGRAM

You can also catch our LoJo Art Work and many posts about Young Black Males in the Entertainment and Modeling Industries on the

TuTchT IMAGING INSTAGRAM

HOME

T21 WEEKEND WORK FLOW - HOTFOOT Sneak Peeks

Like most of our current work, we’re keeping HOTFOOT production largely under wraps, but we thought sharing some visuals from the work-in-progress on our social media would be a good way to honor the memory of tragic events of May 31st - June 1st, 1921; events that forever shaped our city, our creative LoJoWerkz output, and our souls.  Scroll forth, LoJoFam, to read more about the project.

“HOTFOOT” started as a grand experiment.  The question: could we create a visually compelling short film on a below-micro-micro, shoestring budget, working almost exclusively on green screen, creating a world out of the whole cloth of our imagination, TuTchT graphic work & historic research?

We approached one of the most in-demand dancers on the world stage, Charles "Lil Buck" Riley & to our surprise, he gladly stepped in to collaborate with us. This was the main ingredient we needed to start cooking something unique, full of LoJo flavor.  The experiment was on.   

We set to work crafting a narrative concept that would feature Buck's virtuosic Memphis Jookin’ skills in a way that hadn’t been seen before.  We settled on the idea of merging Jookin with an early Jazz stride piano style, dropping this mix into a Chaplin-esque silent film comedy environment. Our next decision was to set the story in a fictionalized version of Tulsa’s historic Black Wall Street, 1919-1920, just before the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 which burned it all to the ground.

We have researched the events of the Tulsa Race Massacre since our first book musical in 1997 (A Song of Greenwood) and the history has remained central to a great deal of our LoJoWerkz projects. HOTFOOT gave us a chance to focus on the historic, richly textured Black community in a very positive, light-hearted way.  Without an abundance of funds, the project is taking years to complete but the amazing performances of Buck along with some of Tulsa’s top talent make working on the project a true labor of love. (S/O to the capture crew: Mike Williams of Aces High Studio, James Sims of Blue Flame Productions & Nita Smothers.)

DO YOURSELF A FAVOR AND SPEND SOME TIME TODAY RESEARCHING THE TULSA RACE RIOT OF 1921.  IT IS HAUNTINGLY RELEVANT TO AMERICA’S CURRENT UNDERCURRENTS.

You can start here with this excellent out-of-circulation cinemax documentary:

OPENING SHOUT OUTS

While we're up to our creative cortex in some major stage and screen projects, our blog update game has been virtually nonexistent.  We work largely in the quiet (as our current banner suggests) on new projects but TRUST, great strides are being made on our film "HOTFOOT," our flagship musical "ROOFLESS," a re-tooling of our musical "A SONG OF GREENWOOD" for a possible Centennial staging as part of the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 commemoration, 2 brand new musicals, a miniseries and a handful of short films. All under wraps. So.....we're going to try to share some more of our social media posts here to keep the page from appearing so neglected while we're hard at work. 

We pulled out our TuTchT IMAGING toolbox and matched the "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" campaign vibe to celebrate three of our favorite Brit brothers in the Industry for their OPENINGS tonight.

JOHN BOYEGA opens tonight in STAR WARS across the country; MALACHI KIRBY opens tonight in London's West End in "BELLEVILLE;" and the man who "discovered" both of these men in their formative young teen years, poured into them, and now represents them as their agent, MR. FEMI OGUNS is constantly opening doors and minds. 

Mr. Oguns was awarded the prestigious "Special Jury Award" earlier this week from the British Independent Film Awards honoring his creation of the Identity School of Acting and Identity Agency Group in London.  "Identity" was Mr. Ogun's answer to the burning question of why there were so few actors of color in British films, on British stages, and among the ranks of young actors being admitted into the UK's prestigious acting schools.  His former students and clients are now a MASSIVE part of the Industry.  Respect, brother!  

What a night in the history of these three men!   

HOLIDAY LOCK-DOWN

This year's holiday situation in the LoJoLab.  Sage & Buck in HotFoot! 

(For anyone who wants a more verbose exploration... 

of course, I got you. hahaha. Read on.) 

LIFE IMITATES ART - Quick, reflective LoJoWerkz Update.

(copied from our Facebook page.)

Been spending 18-hrs-a-day in the dark, cramped cell-like LoJolab, faced with a pile of raw, unformed rocks waiting to be broken down into manageable chunks. Sun up to sun down (and more often vice-versa if I'ma be real) I'm here, pixel-breaking pick axe in hand, writing, composing & editing like a collared maniac on a table full of films, musicals and all manner of production art. Do I get hella tired and sore sometimes? Believe dat! But do I get homesick for "life on the outside?" Never! This is home. And this is life! This imprisonment of my own choosing feels exactly like this scene from “HotFoot” (our first film, now in production) This cell is teeming with talent of the “can’t take your eyes off” variety, hazy visuals that hint at intriguing worlds beyond the bars, and brainstorms of plot twists and hair-brained schemes both of which produce an endless supply of impish grins. >:-) Decades ago, when I became aware of my purpose in life and fully embraced it, I was handed a life sentence by the Universe. And theres no where I’d rather be locked than here!  

Screen capture of HotFoot stars Sage Johnson & Charles “Lil Buck” Riley with a lil post production TuTchTness. S/O to our shooting squad: Mike Williams of Aces High Studios and James Sims of Blue Flame Productions & our skeleton production crew of  Nita Smothers, Jillian Marie & Jerome Johnson (half of LoJoWerkz and half of Sage's parentage.)

ROOFLESS resurrection

We'll knock a couple of "h"s off of our current mantra of "Shhhhhhhhhhhhh!" and quietly let you know we've updated our top banner for the Rooflessthamusical.com website with a few minor art tweaks and new quotes & industry props.

We have a feeling it will be getting some traffic in 2018. Shhhhhhhh!