Mixed Race Studies

One-Woman Multimedia Show ONE DROP OF LOVE Comes to The Fox Theatre, 9/21

BroadwayWorld.com Atlanta
2014-07-10

The Fox Theatre is presenting One Drop of Love on Sunday, September 21 at 3 PM and 7 PM in the Fox Theatre’s Egyptian Ballroom. The show is a multimedia solo performance exploring family, race, love, pain and a path towards reconciliation. Monica Pearson, an active community leader and influencer, will moderate the discussion following both shows. Tickets are $25 and are available for purchase now at www.FoxTheatre.org, by calling 855-285-8499 or at The Fox Theatre Ticket Office.

LIMITED OFFER: ½ price tickets available on Goldstar!

One Drop of Love is a multimedia one woman show written and performed by the show’s writer/performer Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni and is produced by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. It incorporates film, photographs and animation to examine how “race” has been constructed in the United States and how it can influence our most intimate relationships. The show will take you on a journey from the 1700s to the present spanning locations through the world as 16 characters facilitate reconciliation between a daughter and her father. Immediately following each performance, Fanshen facilitates a Q&A segment.

“Amazing performance, staging, autobiography, artistry and an amazing meditation on race and examination of America,” stated Ben Affleck, show producer and 2013 Academy Award winning actor. “I am in awe.” For more information on One Drop of Love, visit www.onedropoflove.org.

About Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni: Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni has been featured in the New York Times and on NPR as a spokesperson on using the arts to explore racial identity. She served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Cape Verde, West Africa, and has designed curricula for and taught English as a Second Language to students from all over the world. She has been honored with the Peace Corps’ Franklin H. Williams Award, and with Peace Corps Fellows and Hollywood Foreign Press Association scholarships. She holds a BA in Spanish and Education, an MA in TESOL, and an MFA in Acting and Performance in Film, TV and Theater. Fanshen is also a proud member of Ensemble Studio Theater/LA Playwrights Unit, and a co-curator of www.MixedRootsStories.org…

For more information, click here. Purchase tickets here ($5.00 discount with promotional access code “LOVE”).

What Audiences Are Saying:

Fanshen Cox’s “One Drop of Love” interweaves the intimacy of personal experience with the larger social and political changes redefining race, gender and the kinship in America. As  important as the performance itself is Fanshen’s sincere interest in, and ability to, connect with her audiences, to link her extremely personal story to other people’s experiences, to be open to their voices even as she is telling her own story. Fanshen offers an insightful, smart, informed, clear-eyed investigation into the complexity of being “mixed” that makes her private journey of keen interest to anyone who crosses cultural or racial boundaries.

– Michele Elam, professor of English, Stanford University

Fanshen’s story is quite incredible, but it is her retelling of it that captures an audience.  I have rarely seen a group of teenagers so rapt with attention to hear the next word.  Her ability to use the personal to build a story about race, family and bridging painful rifts among loved ones and strangers was so potent for these young men and women who grapple with these issues daily.  She is the kind of performer who will inspire people to embrace what makes them different and see it as a strength.

– Randall Arney, Artistic Director, Geffen Playhouse

Wow. “One Drop of Love” is fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing your story and opening up so much thoughtful reflection and discussion about mixed heritage and race — my mind is still buzzing and the audience was so energized.

– Sady Sullivan, Director of Oral History, Brooklyn Historical Society

“One Drop of Love” is beautiful and brave. Cox DiGiovanni’s honesty, insight, dedication, and love are an inspiration. She takes us into the intimate places where family, race, love, and pain intertwine. In this sometimes searing, sometimes funny, and always smart play she shows us both the terrible things we do to those we love and a way forward to a better future.

– Paul Spickard, professor of history at University of California, Santa Barbara

The performance was hands-down the best Choate performance I have ever seen. I’ve seen a lot of white struggle stories, and a lot of black struggle stories, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a mixed struggle story.

– Zemia Edmondson, student at Choate Rosemary Hall

“One Drop of Love” is an hour of pure magic. Cox DiGiovanni is able to shift through time and space and different characters to explain the racial paradigm in America, and the relationship between her and her father in ways that anyone can understand. I highly recommend this show.

– Steven F. Riley, Owner/Curator www.MixedRaceStudies.org

Wow. Hollywood spends millions on movies and they couldn’t bring me from folded over laughter to tears as easily as Fanshen did. She’s engaging with the audience and honest. One Drop conquers racial issues with honesty and an open heart. Anyone who has ever felt out of place…or had a really crazy (but loving) family will really enjoy this.

– Angela Nissel, co-producer Scrubs; author: Broke Diaries, Mixed; writer on The Boondocks

In “One Drop of Love,” Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni offers a thought-provoking, informative, and moving exploration of race, racism, and what it means to identify as “culturally mixed.”  Her authenticity and humor, as she recounts her complex relationships with her parents and the evolution of her thinking, are deeply engaging. This piece not only educates and prompts discussion about important issues, but also inspires audience members to examine and honor their own struggles with identity.

– Jennifer Zakkai, Education Projects Leader, Geffen Playhouse

One Drop of Love is funny, entertaining and moving.

– Kim Wayans, Actress: Pariah, In Living Color; Writer/Performer: A Handsome Woman Retreats

One Drop of a Father’s Love

Biracials Learning About African-American Culture (B.L.A.A.C)
Sunday, 2014-06-15

Zebulon Miletsky, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies
Stony Brook University, State University of New York

This week I had the pleasure of attending a one-woman show by Television and Film actress, Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni, called “One Drop of Love” a multimedia solo performance put on at the Brooklyn Historical Society. It was phenomenal. Not only was it brilliant in its exposition of the social and historical dimensions of race, but it alsobrought a human dimension to the oft-complicated question of mixed race in America.  The context alone was compelling.  In the next room, the critically praised exhibit on Brooklyn Abolitionists entitled “In Pursuit of Freedom”, rich with the documentation and exhibits about slavery and its abolition, much of it the raw material and subtext of the play we were about to witness. The day of the performancealso happened to be “Loving Day”, an annual celebration ofthe anniversary of the 1967 United States Supreme Court decision “Loving v. Virginia” which struck down all anti-miscegenation laws in the U.S. The decision was followed by an increase in interracial marriages, although not necessarily all “black/white” ones, and it is commemorated annually on what is now Loving Day, June the 12th…

Read the entire review here.

One Drop of Love – a performance by Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni at the Brooklyn Historical Society

Brooklyn Historical Society
Crossing Borders, Bridging Generations
2014-06-12, 19:00 EDT (Local Time)

Crossing Borders, Bridging Generations and the Brooklyn Historical Society is delighted to host One Drop of Love, a multimedia solo performance by Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni that incorporates performance, film, photographs, and animation to tell the story of how the notion of ‘race’ came to be in the U.S.

One Drop of Love asks audiences to consider: how does our belief in ‘race’ affect our most intimate relationships? The show travels near and far, in the past and present to explore family, race, love and pain – and a path towards reconciliation. Audiences go on a journey from the 1700s to the present, to cities all over the U.S and to West and East Africa, where both the narrator and her father spent time in search of their racial roots.

One Drop of Love is produced by Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni, Ben Affleck, Chay Carter and Matt Damon. For more information, visit: www.onedropoflove.org.

This event is co-sponsored by LovingDay.org, MixedRootStories.org and MixedRaceStudies.org.

For more information, click here.

One Drop of Love – Lounge Theater 1, Los Angeles

Plays 411
May 2014

Saturday, 2014-05-31 20:30 PDT (Local Time)
Lounge Theatre 1
6201 Santa Monica Boulevard
Los Angeles, California 90038

How does our belief in ‘race’ affect our most intimate relationships?

One Drop of Love is a multimedia solo performance exploring family, race, love, pain – and a path towards reconciliation. The show is produced by Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and the show’s writer/performer Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni.

For more information, click here.

Forget Policy—Americans Can’t Even Agree on Whether Obama Is Black

TakePart
2014-04-15

Liz Dwyer, Staff Writer

A Pew Research Center study finds that whites and Latinos identify the commander-in-chief as ‘mixed race.’

If you thought the United States had achieved the significant historic milestone of electing its first African American president, think again. According to Next America, a just-released Pew Research Center report, only a little over one-fourth of Americans believe Obama is black.

Obama self-identifies as black—he checked the “black, negro, African American” box on the 2010 U.S. Census—and has jokingly identified himself as a mutt too. But when asked if Obama is black or mixed race, 27 percent of Americans say that he’s black, and 52 percent say he’s mixed race.

When the data is broken out according to racial groups, whites and Hispanics respond similarly. Of whites, 24 percent say Obama is black, and 53 percent say he is mixed race. As for Hispanics, 23 percent say he’s black, and 61 percent say he’s mixed race. Asians weren’t asked what they thought. (What’s up with that, Pew?)

The question—Is Obama black or mixed race?—is phrased oddly. A person can be both. And where is Pew’s “Is Obama black or mixed race or white” option? But this study is simply the latest example of America’s mass confusion over Obama’s identity…

…Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni, writer and star of One Drop of Love (Ben Affleck, Chay Carter, and Matt Damon are co-producers), a multimedia show that explores how a father and a daughter develop their racial identities, says she finds it “problematic to allow anyone other than self to identify people as a ‘race.’ ”

Now we get boxes on the U.S. Census survey, but, says Cox DiGiovanni, “until 1970 the race question on the Census was answered through observation by the Census taker.” That means if you looked “black,” you were identified by the Census taker as black—or “negro,” as African Americans were called then…

Read the entire article here.

On Mixed Privilege

Mixed Roots Stories
2014-02-13

Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni, Playwright, Producer, Actress, Educator

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about whether there is such a thing as ‘mixed privilege’. Today in my ESL class one of my students said he would let his daughter marry anyone… except for a Black person. I’ve shared with my students many times and in a number of ways that I am proud of being Black (& other things too). I also often use the exploration of ‘race as a social construct’ in order to teach English at the more advanced levels (as this class was). So what made this student feel comfortable enough to say this to me? Is it that I have a privilege that makes him feel like this kind of blatantly discriminatory statement is OK to say to me?…

Read the entire essay here.

“The performance was hands-down the best Choate performance I have ever seen. I’ve seen a lot of white struggle stories, and a lot of black struggle stories, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a mixed struggle story.” —Zemia Edmondson description of Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni’s one-woman performance, One Drop of Love.

Alexandra Brunjes, “Getting Race-y in the PMAC,” The News: The official student newspaper of Choate Rosemary Hall, Wallingford, Connecticut, January 25, 2014. http://thenews.choate.edu/article/getting-race-y-pmac.

Getting Race-y in the PMAC

The News: The official student newspaper of Choate Rosemary Hall
Wallingford, Connecticut
Saturday, 2014-01-25

Alexandra Brunjes ’16, News Staff Reporter

“How does our belief in ‘race’ affect our most intimate relationships?” This is the question that Ms. Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni sought to answer during her one-woman performance, One Drop of Love, last Friday night, January 17th, on the Paul Mellon Arts Center [(PMAC)] mainstage, employing her relationship with her father as the primary example.

Using a collection of images and voice recordings and the astonishing ability to seamlessly shift personas in order to represent members of her family, Ms. DiGiovanni told the story of her experience with race. 

Ms. DiGiovanni originally meant for One Drop of Love to be a documentary for her Masters of Fine Arts thesis at California State University. “I always knew I wanted to look at race,” she stated. “I wanted to figure out why race was so important in my family, and why it was getting in the way of my relationship with my dad. It took me a long time to realize that the entire reason for my show was to have that final confrontation with my dad.”

Celebrity Ben Affleck, a childhood friend, attended Ms. DiGiovanni’s first show. He then consulted with co-producers from Argo and friend Matt Damon. They ultimately decided to produce her show. She said about this development, “[The show] gained this new trajectory that I never had imagined.”

“This is the largest crowd I have ever performed for, as well as the youngest,” Ms. DiGiovanni said of her Choate performance. “At the end, the response was beautiful. I’m so glad that it can have an impact on people.”

“The performance was hands-down the best Choate performance I have ever seen. I’ve seen a lot of white struggle stories, and a lot of black struggle stories, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a mixed struggle story.” Zemia Edmondson ’16 described…

Read the entire review here.

Choate Celebrates MLK Day

Choate Rosemary Hall
333 Christian Street
Wallingford, Connecticut 06492
(203) 697-2000
Friday, 2014-01-17, 19:30 EST (Local Time)

Photo: Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni

“One Drop of Love,” a multimedia solo performance by Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni, will be presented on Friday, January 17, at 7:30 p.m. in the Arts Center. This performance tells the story of how the notion of race came to be in the U.S. and will begin our diversity conversations leading up to MLK Day. On Monday morning, January 20, the Anti-Defamation League will present, “The Truth About Hate,” in the Worthington Johnson Athletic Center.

For more information, click here.

Professor Mark Christian on Mixed Chicks Chat

Mixed Chicks Chat (The only live weekly show about being racially and culturally mixed. Also, founders of the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival) Hosted by Fanshen Cox, Heidi W. Durrow and Jennifer Frappier
Episode: #233 – Professor Mark Christian
Wednesday, 2011-11-16, 22:00Z (17:00 EST, 14:00 PST)

Mark Christian, Professor & Chair of African & African American Studies
Lehman College, City University of New York

Note from Steven F. Riley: In my opinion, this was the most engaging episode of Mixed Chicks Chat.

Dr. Christian received his B.A. in Sociology and American Studies from Liverpool Hope University, his M.A. in Black Studies from The Ohio State University, and his Ph.D. in Sociology from The University of Sheffield in 1997. He is the author of Multiracial Identity: An International Perspective (Palgrave, 2000) and two other edited volumes, and has been the guest editor of three special issue journals. Currently, he is the book review editor for the Journal of African American Studies.

Selected Bibliography:

• “Mixing Up the Game: Social and Historical Contours of Black Mixed Heritage Players in British Football in Race,” in Ethnicity and Football: Persisting Debates and Emergent Issues, Daniel Burdsey, ed. (London: Routledge, 2011). 131-144.
• Multiracial Identity: An International Perspective, New York: Palgrave, 2000. 186 pp. Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-312-23219-1.
• “The Fletcher Report 1930: A Historical Case Study of Contested Black Mixed Heritage Britishness,” Journal of Historical Sociology, Volume 32, Number 2 (November 2001): 213-241.

Listen to the episode here. Download the episode here.