Rock WILK: THIS PAGE IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION

$9870 has been raised toward opening night!!

OUR JOURNEY TO 500 NAMES:
1-Ebony Brown
2-Anne Hamilton
3-Cindy Wolfe Boynton
4-Stephen Bishop Seely
5-Beth Popik
6-Steven Sachs
7-Noelle V Dor
8-Cory Morowitz
9-Ido Kadman
10-Jennifer Perez
11-Lori Romero
12-Holly Long
13-Jacob Victorine
14-Aisha Douglas
15-Sonia Raquel
16-Jennifer Crews
17-Jessica Molina
18-Alison B Levy
19-Mae Jeskie
20-Vanessa Hawkins
21-Alan Reznik
22-Vivian Taormina
23-Nilki Benitez
24-J. F. Seary
25-Una McGurk
26-Seema Clifasefi
27-Michael Geffner
28-April Stone
29-Lisa Fischer
30-Kathryn Alexander
31-Mia Roman
32-Paula Rodriguez
33-Patty Eljaiek
34-Will Rivera
35-Angela Brasington
36-Helen Corporan
37-Charlie Poems
38-Aimee Gabrielle
39-Fanny Betances
40-Randee Levy
41-James Burns
42-Saria Idana
43-Henry UltimateBoricua Valentin
44-Mark Vigo
45-Gabrielle Rivera
46-Gus Martinez
47-Marbella Silverio
48-Sue Goodman
49-Maya Azucena
50-Bettina GOLD Wilkerson
51-Emma Diaz
52-Shreya Mandal
53-Bobby Roman
54-Chris Harris
55-Carmen Mojica Fabian
56-Christine Benjamin
57-Wanda Molina
58-Mark Baumgarten
59-Stephen Young
60-Christ Ramirez
61-Susan Ito
62-Sarah Chandler
63-Janice Palmer
64-Jon Bates
65-Jan Newman
66-Alicia Anabel Santos
67-Shreedevi Thacker
68-Morley
69-Amy Daniels
70-Bernice Sosa Izquierdo
71-Doug Adler
72-Kari Abelman
73-Nadia Bourne
74-Rosa Casarrubias
75-Rhonda Elhosseiny
76-Edna Lee Figueroa Millan
77-Vanessa Vargas
78-Shannon Grooms
79-Harvey Sherman
80-Jennifer Conley Darling
81-Jeff Knapp
82-Gisele Torres
83-Joyce "BRONX" Bradley
84-Bill Hawk
85-Marcus John
86-Naa Akua
87-Rob Findlay
88-Rob "Simply Rob" Vassilarakas
89-Samantha Alethea Inniss
90-Stacy Lasner
91-Hadas Kushnir
92-Kelly Newsome
93-Audrey Martell
94-Ema Lia
95-Christa Victoria
96-Aryeh Bernstein
97-Heather Hunt
98-Bianca Bagatourian
99-James "Peach" Mcclory
100-Francesca Rollins
101-Ava Gaudet
102-Joe Ham [Hamit Up Productions]
103-Arlene Donovan
104-Judy Sickler
105-Robert F.Aponte Junior [Leslie Marrero]
106-Bobby DeJesus
107-Shelly Ramirez
108-Greg Demaras [John C. Conover Agency]
109-Humble Fyre
110-The Craftaholic
111-Jakira Torres
112-Jeff Bohnhoff
113-Elana Rutenberg Hayden
114-Ellie Rodriguez
115-Tatiana Dellepiane
116-Jay Feinberg
117-Kenny Mandel
118-Zara Phillips
119-Nancy Arroyo Ruffin
120-John Kaplow
121-Lara Morton
122-Zhen Xu
123-Jani Rose
124-Rachel Bernstein
125-Michael Raysses
126-Victoria Cepeda
127-Efrain Nieves [Pa'lante Latino]
128-Jessica Moreira
129-Sabrina Gilbert
130-Latanya DeVaughn
131-Michael Sodano
132-Steve Peckman
133-Amber Summers
134-Sabrina Sacks Mann
135-Madaline Sparks
136-Suzette Eby
137-Nathalie Leon
138-Stu Smiley [HBO]
139-Giorgio Kolaj [Famous Famiglia]
140-Ari Levy
141-Maya Barros Odim
142-Yesenia Bosch
143-Daria Jarmel
144-Thomas Phillips
145-Curtis Wiley
146-Suhey Rivera
147-Michele Messina
148-Angela Malverne
149-Meriam Rodriguez
150-Amalia Vulala
151-David Diaz
152-Jay Brandwein
153-Jim Victorine
154-Gail Hirsch
155-Luz Guerra
156-Michael Dote
157-Arin Maya Lawrence
158-Mike Street
159-Carol Senavitis
160-Ayodele Alli
161-Kelly Walsh
162-Adam Tendler
163-James Walsh
164-Suhey Rivera
165-Jeffrey Posner
166-Christina Mendez
167-Hanna Latif
168-Jeff Fischer
169-Leslie Fischer
170-Natalie Ramos
171-Mel Espana
172-Mardeah Gbotoe
173-Moira Storrar
174-La Boricua-Goddess
175-Julie Bolt
176-Justine Hornedo
177-Red Sirens
178-Ed Toney
179-Lloyd Phillips
180-Phil Peredo
181-Sasa Bella
182-Sally Cooper
183-Peggy Robles Alvarado
184-Mariah Rivera
185-Saundra Robinson
186-Marcus Robinson
187-Dina Kushnir
188-Yochanan Kushnir
189-J Skye Cabrera
190-Debbie Smith
191-Julia Goldman
192-Dennis Michael Lucas
193-Michael McIntee
194-Xia Lily Daniel
195-John Kolaj
196-Paul Kolaj
197-Tony Kolaj
198-Naima Ince
199-Merlene Douglas
200-Lorena Rodriguez
201-Philip Mangiat
202-Michele Sobel Randazzo
203-Dymond Dalton
204-Carole Proszowski
205-George "Urban Jibaro" Torres
206-Papo "Swiggity" Santiago
207-Eleni Hopkins [Reikes]
208-Eleanor Merson
209-Stephanie St James
210-Michele Friedman
211-Raul Brunet Jr
212-Jo Murray
213-Angel Rodriguez
214-Barbara Horne
215-Sylvana Opris
216-Natalie Sturgis
217-Tasha Pierce
218-Bernard Garbo
219-Helene Ruiz
220-Tai Allen
221-Kristen Amendola
222-Sophie Hurtado
223-Kathleen O'Grady
224-Stinson O'Grady
225-Suhey Rivera
226-Yvette Coleman
227-Tom Coleman
228-Teresa L. Vescera
229-Dan Ginsberg
230-Natalie Papailiou
231-Lourdes Melendez-Gamez
232-Rosalia Villanueva Whiteman
233-Caridad Svitch
234-Chandi Mandal
235-Janice Dempsey
236-Jomaira 'La Sensacion' Martinez
237-Kathy Snyder
238-Maria Rodriguez
239-LatinosNYC
240-Lou Liberatore
241-Noah Reitman
242-Ronald Brown
243-Ellen Mednikoff
244-Gladys LaFrossia
245-Tiesen Bolero
246-Paige Allen
247-Suhey Rivera
248-Aminta Delara
249-Aisha Sidibe
250-Jim Wharton
251-Norma Wharton
252-Hillary Rollins
253-Robyn Ellenbogen
254-Ron Bernstein
255-Richard Isaacs
256-Lukisha R. Williams
257-Judy Landers
258-Randy Isaacs Karsch
259-Sien Ide
260-Richard Santiago Jr
261-Brenda Pabon
262-Taisha Rodriguez
263-John J Hard Ent.
264-DJ Rhythm
265-Christopher Garcia [Christbearer]
266-Ebony Rivera
267-Claudia Whittingham
268-Vanessa Williams
269-Christopher Kaczmarek
270-Natasha Kubis
271-Irene Zimmerman
272-Passion Lives
273-Tia Fortunate
274-Caridad De La Luz [La Bruja]
275-Arlena Dunn Brown
276-Erika Citron Scotti
277-Zoraida Figueroa

In summer of 2006, my friend, Jane Rollins was in a downtown hospital, recovering from a hip replacement, or maybe it was her knee, or shoulder, she's had it all, I can't really remember, but I brought some music in for her to listen to that I had been working on, a collaborative project where I was given some very political poetry, and I was asked to "make these poems into songs", and so I did, and the result was some pretty cool productions. I went all out, from drums and bass to guitars and keyboards, I added some beautiful string arrangements, did all of the vocals myself, including some HUGE background arrangements, a Rock WILK "choir" if you will, and so I was very proud of this work. I let Mrs Rollins listen, and since she is first and foremost a vocalist, she had been a big band singer back in the day, and also given the fact that she was, and still is, a social activist, she LOVED this work. One day, her husband, and also my good friend Jack Rollins was visiting his wife in the hospital and Mrs Rollins handed him the headphones and he listened to my music, and he was FLOORED!!! He LOVED it, just raved about it, which made me feel very happy, obviously, especially coming from a man who was responsible for managing the careers of such great artists as Woody Allen, Robin Williams, Billy Crystal, David Letterman, among many others, it was a thrill for me to get that type of response from someone like Mr Rollins. I mean, I had a very close relationship with him, but it was really about our love for all of the New York sports teams that we both live and die with, The Yankees, The Football Giants, and the Knicks. This was really the first time, I believe, Mr Rollins recognized me as a serious artist, I never felt it was appropriate for me to approach him in that way, I felt it was better to just remain "friends", and so we did, but this moment changed everything, and it led to a beautiful fall day that October, still in 2006, where Mr Rollins said to me, "Rock, you need to do an album".
I replied, "I have no interest in really doing that, I have nothing to say." At the time, I was earning my living placing music on some television shows, picking up some sessions around town as a background vocalist, doing quite a few independent productions with some young artists around town, and so I was "good" with that, but Mr Rollins had other ideas. "Rock, you have a very unusual, interesting story, you need to tell it, and I mean, NEED. I believe you need to get it out of you, that this is your life's work, and I feel like if you approach it in that way, as ART, and not as "trying to get a record deal", you will do great work, you are an amazing artist, I heard that on the recording I listened to at the hospital". I told Mr Rollins, I couldn't do it because it would take too much time to engage in that type of work, that my life was not set up that way, and he offered to sponsor me, with one "request"........ "Rock, I'm gonna give you this check, but I want you to promise me one thing. That you will BLEED all over this music, that you will dig as deep as you can and be willing and brave enough to really REVEAL yourself in this music. The GREAT artists are the ones who are willing to do that, you KNOW WHO THEY ARE from their work, I believe you are like those artists, very unusual, very special, you have that gift, but the value is only if you are willing to bare your soul like that, and so you need to promise me that you will approach this work in that way, and if you do that, I will support you in this endeavor. I believe that if you are willing to REALLY open it up, to really REVEAL yourself to those who get to experience your work, they will love you as much as I do. Also, Rock, my hope is that this work will serve you for the rest of your life. So... can you promise me that?".
And so BROKE WIDE OPEN was born, I began writing the songs in October of that year, in 2006, each day riding the subways of New York City all day and all night, which is where I had ALWAYS done my creating, I could be found singing into my little digital recorder all over town, on the G Train, on the A Train, on The D Train, creating songs from the center of my soul, I bled out, I released everything that I had inside of me, and then, at the end of each day I would go visit Mr Rollins and sit in Riverside Park with him, sharing what magic I had come up with on that particular day, and by April, the album had been written and recorded. I produced and performed all of that work in my little studio in my apartment in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn, where I was living at the time, it was the most amazing catharsis, and by August of that next summer, in 2007, BROKE WIDE OPEN was mastered and released out into the universe.

And so now I had this work, this album, and I really didn't know what to do with it, but I began getting feedback immediately, and it was profound, very positive, but also very interesting. This was not your average collection of songs, this was a series of stories that all directly related to my life, in a genre of music that could really only be described as MY genre, and it was not "easy" to listen to, I was putting some controversial material out there, but what was MOST interesting for me was that I guess it all came out in a way that made quite a few people say to me, "it feels like a play".
To make a long story short, I listened, and my first live performance piece was born, called Ma'Plej, which was almost 4 hours of music and poetry and monologue, VERY high energy and maybe just a little bit of chaos. It was a lot, I'll say it like that, it was all of what I was going thru in my life at that time, I had actually endured a lot of LOSS at that time in my life, my mother had passed away, my marriage had fallen apart, my family was crumbling, I was finally, for the first time in my life dealing with my adoption, being fostered before that, my biological beginnings, and so this was how all of my emotions, my reflecting, began to manifest itself, thru my art, and so I just found places to perform Ma'Plej and began to get more feedback. Probably the most important day of this entire journey came at a performance down in Asbury Park, NJ, in a small theater called The Showroom, and a friend of mine invited the artistic director of The Revision Theatre to see Ma'Plej and that person was Stephen Bishop Seely. Stephen seemed to like the piece, and he agreed to sit with me a few days later at a coffee shop and discuss what he had experienced and allow me to pick his brain, share my hopes for Ma'Plej with him, and we sat for 3 hours that day, Stephen told me that he felt Ma'Plej was great, but that it was also about 14 plays, and he felt I should choose one of the stories and develop that into my first play, and BROKE WIDE OPEN had come full circle because in that exact moment. That day in the hospital when Mr Rollins heard my music for the first time had finally led me to my life's work, and I had finally defined it. And so the next part of my journey had begun.

What feels like a million re-writes later, I have the most amazing completed script now. After those humble beginnings I have had the opportunity of doing a 3 week workshop of my play in New York City last year, completed a renegade national tour, traveled to London, survived the riots and had some of the most evocative and compelling performances at The Camden Fringe Festival, sold out a performance at The United Solo Theatre Festival almost 8 weeks in advance that was presented on Theatre ROW here in my beloved New York City, will be a part of the 2012 Mainstage season at The Passage Theatre in Trenton, NJ this coming March, which will be my first inclusion in the programming at a legitimate regional theater, and then.......... We have finally arrived as to exactly why I wrote all of this, why I felt I needed to share this entire story with you.

It is time for BROKE WIDE OPEN to take this major step toward what has been my goal from the very beginning, which is to open one day on a Broadway stage. This journey has been the most amazing and cathartic experience of my life, I have completely re-invented myself, my play IS my life, my life's work and my life's joy, and so I am planning to present BROKE WIDE OPEN this spring, after my performances at The Passage Theatre, as a commercial production, right here in New York City. I am going to do a run, an extended run that, hopefully, will sustain itself, continue to grow, and lead me to Broadway. BROKE WIDE OPEN at it's core, is RAW, it is ME, naked for all of you to see, and that will never be lost in any production, but also, it is BEAUTIFUL, and from the very beginning of Ma'Plej, I knew this was a combination of many things, and so BROKE WIDE OPEN will have the most amazing and dynamic lighting design, I am commissioning an artist to paint a huge mural that will actually house video and still photos, the music is the most unique and eclectic overture that you have ever heard, a combination of so many styles of music, I come from a jazz background, but my music is also steeped in the roots of R&B and Hip Hop, even some roots music, it is all from deep inside of me, I created it all for BROKE WIDE OPEN, and you will feel my spirit in what, I hope, beautifully complements this story of my search for my identity, where I feel wanted and comfortable, my search for HOME, so to speak.

BROKE WIDE OPEN is actually a very complex story, it includes, as a thru line, my very ambivalent search for my biological mother while also introducing you to my adoptive parents and what incredibly loving and generous people they were. In many ways, BROKE WIDE OPEN is about how fortunate I was in my life, despite the fact that the first significant moment of my life was that I was given away, this is a story of realization, a "coming of age", of finally being comfortable in my own skin, of loving myself, and releasing all of the obstructions that existed, including the ones that I created, in my life to keep me "separated" from my own happiness for most of my existence. And so BROKE WIDE OPEN, much like The Wizard of OZ, is the story of me trying to get HOME.


And so here I am, all of this work, all of this life, and it is time for me to take my shot, and so I have found the perfect space here in Manhattan, and I need to raise money to secure it. I am trying to raise $40,000 to run BROKE WIDE OPEN, to begin this part of my journey. Part of that money is to secure the space. Part is to pay my wonderful collaborators, my set, light and video designers, my artist, my director, my publicist, it costs a lot of money to get something like this off the ground, I have laid the foundation, have acquired the most beautiful and amazing core of supporters, have sold out almost every show I have done here in the city for the past year, and although this is a big mountain to climb, I bet my life on BROKE WIDE OPEN 5 years ago, have accomplished everything I set out to accomplish between then and now, and so it is time for me to make this very important step in my progression happen. This exact moment is what all of this work and dedication, sacrifice and commitment has been for. I hope that you will consider helping me with my journey to a Broadway production. It begins here in a small theater in midtown Manhattan where the full production will be put up for the first time, and as they say, and what I fully expect to happen, "if you build it, they will come".

I've been building this for my entire life, and so to honor my parents who saved my life, my Grandmother who made me feel as if she was my "blood", to all of the people who have supported me and my dream both financially and spiritually over the past 5 years, to honor more people than I could ever mention here, I am intent upon finishing this deal, and realizing my dream. Somehow over the past year, BROKE WIDE OPEN stopped being "all about me", and it has become everyone's story, that has been clear in the consistent response at every performance I have done over the past few years, and so I feel it is my RESPONSIBILITY to fulfill Mr Rollins' wish, that this work will "serve me for the rest of my life". I love that he used the word "serve". I will "serve" with this work for as long as I am able, for as long as you all will have me. THANK YOU for your support, whether it be your love and good wishes or your money, it all feeds me and I am grateful for every drop.

I want BROKE WIDE OPEN to be a play that people WANT to see, that they WANT to be a part of, this story was born on the subways and streets of NYC, then spread across the country and eventually navigated overseas to London, and so I feel like BROKE WIDE OPEN is about COMMUNITY, and even though this story is ”all about me”, it has really become EVERYBODY'S story, BROKE WIDE OPEN is about ALL OF US, and it would be such a beautiful thing if I could somehow get 500 names on this page to contribute to the continuation of this magical ride, and that you will all continue to fly with me. BROKE WIDE OPEN. The world is our community. Lets begin again with 500 names. Give what you can. I'll take care of the rest!!

Let the fundraising begin.......... The road to $40,000, Dear Universe......... I need $15,000 by the end of December. I promise you I will use it wisely and continue to work hard for as long as I am alive.

See you at the theater!!!!

Peace and love

Rock WILK


ALL CONTRIBUTORS WILL BE LISTED AS DONORS IN THE BROKE WIDE OPEN PROGRAM

CONTRIBUTIONS OF $50 OR MORE WILL GET YOU 1 FREE TICKET TO A SHOW DURING THE RUN

CONTRIBUTIONS OF $100 OR MORE WILL GET YOU A FREE COPY OF MY ALBUM, BROKE WIDE OPEN, PLUS 2 TICKETS

CONTRIBUTIONS OF $250 OR MORE WILL GET YOU AN ALBUM AND A SIGNED SCRIPT AND 2 TICKETS

CONTRIBUTIONS OF $500 OR MORE WILL GET YOU ALL OF THE ABOVE AND YOU WILL BE CREDITED AS CONTRIBUTOR

CONTRIBUTIONS OF $1000 OR MORE WILL GET YOU ALL OF THE ABOVE AND YOU WILL BE CREDITED AS MAJOR CONTRIBUTOR

CONTRIBUTIONS OF $2500 OR MORE WILL GET YOU ALL OF THE ABOVE AND YOU WILL BE CREDITED AS EPIC CONTRIBUTOR

CONTRIBUTIONS OF $5000 OR MORE WILL GET YOU ALL OF THE ABOVE AND YOU WILL BE CREDITED AS PRODUCER

[allow 24 hours for your name to appear on the list]

THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONTINUED SUPPORT, WE ARE ONE DAY CLOSER TO BROADWAY!!!
LET'S DO THIS!!