Keith Antar Mason

is a poet, playwright and performer whose stage and literary works have been presented extensively throughout the United States and Britain for over two decades, including the LIFT festival, Brooklyn Academy of Music, New World Theater, theWalker Center for the Performing Arts and the National Black Theater Summit "On Golden Pond" in New Hampshire.

Mason’s poems, stories and essays have been published in dozens of publications, including; Black Theater: Ritual Performance in the African Diaspora (Temple University Press),Beyond the Frontier: Afrikan-American Poetry for the 21st Century (Black Classic Press),Let’s Get It On: The Politics of Black Performance (Bay Press), and Pacific Review.

Keith Antar Mason has performed and his work produced, internationally in London, Mexico City, and many cities in the U.S., including works commissioned for the Los Angeles Festival and the Serious Fun festival at Lincoln Center.

He writes, directs, and sometimes performs with the Hittite Empire, for which he is the Artistic Director and a co-founding member. In addition to it’s own highly acclaimed repertory of work, the Hittite Empire collaborates with communities around the United States and in the U.K. to create works that grow from experiences and are performed by young African American and African Diasporic men between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five.

Through the theatrical process the Hittite Empire provides safe and healing rituals for all who wish to dismiss hatred from their bodies, spirits and minds and love themselves on healed terms.

Mason’s literary achievements also include spoken word recordings. He is the founder of Black Madrid, a Black poetry-jazz-rap-recording collective that has created new works for New American Radio, BarKubCo Music, and New Alliance Records.

Active in numerous arts organizations, Mason is on the steering committee of the National Performance Network and isinvolved with the Saturday Morning Literary Workshop and the California Multicultural Men’s Movement. He is the founding director of the Los Angeles Black Repertory Company in Los Angeles.

Awards and honors include the Brody Arts Fund, Franklin Furnace, Art Matters, Harvard Book Award, the Barbara Mandingo KellyPeace Award and the Midwest Black Playwrights Award.

His most recent book of poems is published by Red Hen Press and he has also penned ten multi-cultural, genre defining screenplays with Clayton Rees Karush.

Keith and Clays Screenplays are available for interested readers & producers here:

https://claytonkarush.com/Log_Splash

Screenplays:


ESPECIALLY WHEN THE INVITATION IS GONE
Urban/Magical Realism


A NY rapper raised by his grandparents in Houston realizes he has the gift of preternatural sight and goes to help with the next world catastrophe.

Status: script complete. Page count: 71

FLYING INTO THE ZONE
ART/ACTION

Art Activists battle a real estate corporation for bureaucratic control of an Old Negro Arts community in a conservative Mid-Western town. Through peaceful means of artistic expression, the artists make a powerful stand.

Status: script complete. Page count: 109

I DRINK TELEVISED GODS
URBAN/MAGICAL REALISM

A young hip-hop dancer runs into beef with a rival crew while his father gets lost fishing and realizes his son’s importance, then journeys to save him.

Status: script complete. Page count: 116

WARTORN
ACTION/PSYCH THRILLER

The most action packed and horrifying movie ever. Present day life on the most dangerous border of America.

Status: script complete. Page count: 100

ANGEL TONGUES & PIERCED NIPPLES
ACTION/URBAN/MAGICAL REALISM

Jesus made a mistake, delivered a package to the wrong receiver and now he’s come back to put things right.

Status: script complete. Page count: 154



COVEN
From their positions of power and through their super natural abilities four elemental witches exert control over their coven (which consists of 28 members) and desert town of Mirage, which resembles a mythical version of Las Vegas.
Status: pilot complete. Page count: 28 & 24

TRIG’S HISTORY
Trig, unknowingly finds himself in the clutches of a Nefilim. Joined by five displaced, Phoenicians trapped in time by a Solar Maximus. They must deal with the Nefilim and the future.
Status: pilot complete. Page count: 25

CAMP REDEMPTION
Ghede Jones, is court ordered to perform community service at the artist colony Camp Redemption. Here, damaged but selected artists come to regain their spirit under the watchful eye of Xerxes Hommes, the owner of the Estate in West Texas on which the colony exists.
Status: pilot complete. Page count: 26

JOHN OVER JOHN
After a career ending injury, a professional athlete returns to his families home and comes into newly found conjure man and Hoodoo powers. His families land sits on the border of a Hoodoo woman’s property and a battle between these two prominent families begins anew. A land grab for cultural dominance inRivertown,USA.
Status: pilot complete. Page count: 26

THE EDGE
Jerome Pugh, owner of an NBA franchise, goes to his favorite Bar & Grill to wait for his older fiancé and to hang out with friends. On this night he plans to accept her marriage proposal, but everyone else warns him not to marry her. Meanwhile his fiancé plots to catch him cheating with a hired decoy.
Status: pilot complete. Page count: 26




Commissioned Productions (plays):

2010     “HEART PROJECT” Ring Cycle Remix Project, Continuation High School’s
2009 “HEART PROJECT” Ring Cycle Remix Project, Continuation High School’s

2009 “KEEP IT CLEAN” Poetry Workshop, Olympic High School, Santa Monica, CA.

2008 Memphis Theological Seminary
Return to the Beat: Theology and Arts Institute.
Dealing with Community Viole nce Through Prophetic Voice.
Theater Laboratory

2007 "Man In The Belly Of A Slave Ship: From Angola to Angola ” production

2006 Voices from Leimert Park: a poetry anthology. Contributing Writer.

2005 From Hip-Hop to Hittite and Other Poetic Healing Rituals for Young Black Men:
A Retrospective, by Keith Antar Mason.

2002 Contributor to the Anthology Black Theatre: Ritual Performance In the African Diaspora, Paul Carter Harrison, Victor Leo Walker III and Gus Edwards, eds.;
Temple University Press

Contributor to the Anthology Beyond the Frontier: Afrikan-American Poetry for
the 21st Century, E. Ethelbert Miller, ed., Black Classic Press.

Las Vegas Poetry Workshop as Spring Mountain Prison, City of Las Vegas,
Poetry Workshop for SMARTS in School, Santa Monica, CA
    1st Grade, McKinley Elementary School
    2nd Grade, John Muir Elementary School

PEN in the Classroom
    Poetry Workshop at Venice High School
    Poetry Workshop a Santa Monica High School

2001 “Skeletons of Fish,” London International Festival of Theatre, Riverside Studios.
London England.
HIGHLIGHTED RESUME. FULL VERSION UPON REQUEST.