Vermal, as she prefers to be called, had come from a one-time performance of the play, Tara's Crossing, at the Richmond Hill High School on Saturday, May 17 and which told the story of her experience as a young boy struggling with his sexual identity, persecution in the countryside and in Georgetown, Guyana's capital, to asylum seeking and detention in the U.S, in Miami and Elizabeth, New Jersey. Along with some of her closest friends, the play's cast, and with the play's writer, director and producer, Vermal twirled and danced to the music blaring from two large speakers.

"Although the play does tell my story, it only tells of my experiences when I arrived in the U.S. and not of my complete experience back in Guyana," said Vermal shimmying and gyrating to the music as if she was casting off the memories of the pain she had endured.

As she explained, the name "Tara's Crossing" was taken from the Hindi word for star, which she attributes to her experience and likening to a star crossing in the night sky.

Please continue to Full Story

Director Barry Scott says, "This particular approach has an important social relevance for urban America today. This treatment fits like a glove."

Please continue to Full Story

By Justin Smith, Sr. Correspondent

When growing up one has to come to the realization that "one of these people is not like the others" namely them. As a gay man or lesbian you have to quickly adapt to the feelings that might want to hide from you family, or come out of the closet with.

"It's that moment when you realize that the world around you isn't really designed for you," says Fenton Bailey, one of the producers of the documentary "When I Knew," tells the Southern Voice.

The documentary is the latest project from Bailey and Randy Barbato, the award-winning filmmakers behind "Eyes of Tammy Faye," "Party Monster" and "Inside Deep Throat." The two producers have there own personal struggles when they came out themselves.

"For many of us, it is the moment we learn to hide and to lie about ourselves," Barbato says. "It can be a frightening and lonely time."

"When I knew" is filled with gut wrenching testimonies, stories and tears.

Julie, a 27-year-old social worker, didn't realize she had romantic feelings for women until she was two months pregnant. Her belly was full, but her soul was "empty" after ending a friendship with another female.

"I couldn't understand why a friend, a broken friendship, would cause me so much heartbreak and loss," Julie says in the documentary.

Please continue to Full Story

CLEVELAND – June 17, 2008 – Karamu House will posthumously induct native son Langston Hughes into its Hall of Fame on June 28 at 20/20 in the Flats. Theatergoers may not realize Hughes wrote the critically acclaimed “Black Nativity,” which Karamu has produced for 24 seasons to enthusiastic crowds.

In 1961, Hughes was commissioned to create a gospel drama for Christmas. He wanted to make African-American gospel music the heart and soul of the drama and based his play, “Wasn’t That A Mighty Day,” on the theme of the Nativity story. The musical later became known as “Black Nativity.”

The literary works of Hughes, a poet, writer and playwright, are studied and discussed in high school classrooms and university lecture halls across the country. Hughes, who attended Cleveland’s Central High School from 1916 to 1920, is one of the most popular and influential writers of the 20th century.

For many years, Hughes was a familiar face at Karamu, where he taught art classes while in high school. He wrote his first play at Karamu, “The Golden Piece,” in 1921. He wrote and debuted several other works at Karamu. Hughes also became a member of the Karamu Players, a theatrical troupe.

Please continue to Full Story

Tickets to the Awards Ceremony & Performance, which will be held at The Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theatre at Symphony Space, 2537 Broadway at 95th, on Saturday, August 9th at 8pm, are $35.00.  The 4 nominees for BEST PLAY of the season will be performed and awards will be presented for BEST PLAY, BEST DIRECTOR, BEST ACTOR & BEST ACTRESS.  The playwright of the Best Play will win a $1,500 Prize and a development deal to have a full-length play to be produced by the Riant.  A prize of $150 will be awarded to Best Director, Best Actor & Best Actress. 

The Riant Theatre founded in 1979 by classically trained actor Van Dirk Fisher, is a New York State 501(c) 3 professional theatre corporation, dedicated to providing a nurturing environment to develop new plays and outstanding artists.  The Strawberry One-Act Festival, the brainchild of Artistic Director, Van Dirk Fisher, is a play competition in which the audience and the theatre's judges cast their votes to select the best play of the season.  Twice a year, hundreds of plays from across the country are submitted for the competition, of which 37 were chosen to compete. Plays move from the 1st round to the semi-finals and then the finals. The playwright of the winning play receives $1,500 and the opportunity to have a full-length play developed by the Riant. Some of the plays in the festival will be chosen for publication in the anthology of The Best Plays From The Strawberry One-Act Festival: Volume 5.

In July the Strawberry One-Act Festival will also broadcast the festival via the internet on the second day of each series in the competition.  To pay to view the festival online and cast your vote, go to www.therianttheatre.com/video.  The online fee is $25.00 to see a series of 3 to 5 plays.

The Strawberry One-Act Festival will have a KICK-OFF PARTY on Monday, July 14th from 6pm - 8pm, the place to be determined.  The playwrights, directors, actors and production crew from the plays in the festival will be available for interviews with the press.  For Press Tickets please call Kevin Hansen at 646-623-3488.

Please continue to Full Story

CLEVELAND – Jean E. Hawkins’ theatrical credits include work on an estimated 125 productions at Karamu House during an affiliation with the nationally recognized performing arts institution spanning more than 40 years.

The veteran actor, singer and director is a member of the Karamu Hall of Fame induction class of 2008. She is the nominee in the Local Legend-Living category and will share the spotlight with fellow honorees during the induction ceremony on June 28.

Actor James Pickens of television’s “Grey’s Anatomy” and entertainer Kym Whitley will co-host the event at 20/20 in the Flats. Pickens and Whitley also hail from Cleveland and are Karamu alums.

Hawkins, fondly called “Granny” by many of her fans, was a familiar face at Karamu from 1962 until 1981, when she moved to Los Angeles. Long-time Karamu theatergoers may remember her tear-jerking performance as Minister Essie Bell Johnson in “Tambourines to Glory,” a production that broke box office records at Karamu during its 1972 theatrical run.

Prior to her taking the stage, Hawkins worked in Karamu’s box office and its marketing and public relations departments. She made her stage debut in 1962 in “Time of Your Life,” with Nolan Bell.

Please continue to Full Story

The initial plan for Rock's debut shows in England were tentative - and you can see why.

Aside from a handful of Hollywood credits, he wasn't really a name here, let alone a face; he was best-known as a voice. You can hear him on Five narrating Everybody Hates Chris - the sweetly surreal sitcom that revisits his teenage days as a Brooklyn misfit in an all-white school.

Please continue to Full Story

Detroit - It's midnight when the Fisk University Jubilee Singers arrive at the Memphis train station. It's 1871 and the former slaves are in the midst of an arduous tour to raise money to prevent their failing school from bankruptcy.

The choir finds the door locked, the station deserted. Suddenly, a mob materializes out of the darkness wielding torches, rifles and clubs. The singers shiver with terror.

The cast during rehearsal of the play SING JUBILEE!  Photo by Romain Blanquart

George White, the white Northerner and Fisk treasurer who organized the tour, steps in front of the lynch mob.

He raises his hand and his students begin to literally sing for their lives:
In the morning when I rise/ Give me Jesus.

The song, a plaintive Negro spiritual, dissolves the evil in the air the way that the sun melts ice. The rioters retreat, their leader reduced to tears.

The scene, a turning point in the history of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, and in the history of American music, stands at the center of "Sing Jubilee," a play by OyamO (Charles Gordon) that receives its world premiere this weekend by Mosaic Youth Theatre of Detroit. The play tells the remarkable story of the Fisk Jubilee Singers who, facing brutal social conditions and segregation, introduced white audiences to Negro spirituals, the religious folk songs of African-American slaves.

The Jubilee Singers of Fisk University, circa 1875.

The Fisk Jubilee Singers were the first to transform the spiritual from a folk form into concert music, forging a tradition inherited in the 20th Century by black classical singers like Marian Anderson and Paul Robeson and continuing today with Jessye Norman, Denyce Graves, Detroit's Brazeal Dennard Chorale and others.

The first black idiom to cross over to mainstream America, spirituals would have a profound impact on the development of blues and jazz, and their influence can be heard in composers as diverse as Gershwin, Dvorak and Charles Mingus.

"The Fisk Jubilee Singers were the fountainhead of a continuing stream of musicians who trace their sources back to the praise and sorrow songs that Ella Sheppard and her schoolmates first shyly performed for their white mentor ... in the curtained dark of Fisk's decaying barracks," writes Andrew Ward in "Dark Midnight When I Rise," a now out of print history of the Jubilee Singers that was published in 2000.

According to the program, his name is Benard. And he circles the periphery of the action, just as this heartfelt but diffuse and repetitive drama of broken kinship keeps circling around itself.

Tracey A. Leigh as Yvette Goodwater and Reginald André Jackson as Marcus Goodwater star in the world premiere of "Fathers and Sons," presented by The Hansberry Project at ACT

A world premiere from ACT's Hansberry Project, "Fathers and Sons" contains many pungent exchanges, and a meaningful subject: the estrangement of fathers and sons through several generations of African-American men and how it might be healed.

The omnipresent phantom Benard Goodwater (Wilbur Penn) is the bad daddy incarnate — a trumpet-toting, be-bopping ne'er-do-well, who serves as a jive Greek chorus.

He was clearly a lousy father to his haunted son Leon (William Hall Jr.). And Leon returned the disfavor to his own offspring Marcus (Reginald André Jackson), by becoming a coke-sniffing, child-neglecting womanizer himself.

Please continue to Full Story

Blue previews May 16, 17, 18, and 22; the show opens May 23; and the show runs May 24 through June 15, 2008. Performances are Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings at 8 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday matinees at 3 p.m. -- www.jubileetheatre.org

Source link