Really thrilled for NBI Festival alum Dominique Morisseau, whose play Detroit ’67 opened tonight at The Public Theater as part of its Public Lab program and runs through March 17.  Here’s the synopsis:

It’s 1967 in Detroit and Motown music gets the party started. Chelle and her brother Lank transform their basement into an after-hours joint to make ends meet. But when a mysterious woman winds her way into their lives, the siblings clash over much more than family business. As their pent-up feelings erupt, so does their city, and the flames of the ‘67 Detroit riots engulf them all. DETROIT ‘67 is presented in association with the Classical Theatre of Harlem.

Directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah, the cast of Detroit ’67 features De’Adre Aziza (recognized by many of the magazine’s readers from her role in Passing  Strange), Francois Battiste, Brandon J. Dirden, Samantha Soule, and Michelle Wilson.

Dominique, a writer and actress, is a recent alum of the 2011 Public Theater Emerging Writers Group, the Women’s Project Playwrights Lab, and a 2011-2012 Lark Playwrights Workshop fellow.  She’s currently developing a 3-play cycle on her hometown of Detroit–The Detroit Projects.  Detroit ’67 is the first play in the series, and was developed at The Public Theater and was a finalist for the 2011 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference.

Very cool that all tickets to this Public Lab production are only $15.  Get tix by phone at 212 967-7555 or online at The Public Theater.

Additional link:

• Detroit ’67 official

(photo credit: Steven Rosen Photography)

Folks big and small came out to help writer Jacqueline Woodson (above) celebrate the musical inspired by her book Show Way!

Congrats to the acclaimed children’s & young-adult author for the musical, which is about seven generations of women who pass quilts or “show ways” from daughter to daughter. Thanks to the talented multi-culti cast, the imaginative production was alive with laughter as well as teachable moments. Following the premiere, the McGinn/Cazale Theater on Manhattan’s Upper West Side was packed with little ones lining up to get autographs from the actors, the writer and the book’s illustrator Hudson Talbot.

Those of you with kids from 4 to 12 who’ve been clamoring for some age-appropriate theater with African-American stories will want to check it out.

Kudos to the Vital Theatre Group and all involved for bringing culturally diverse children’s theater to New York!

Show Way runs every Saturday and Sunday, 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., plus school holidays thru March 3rd. Tickets, $25 / $30.

Additional links:

• Jacqueline Woodson official
• Vital Theatre

Gil (Colman Domingo) and Adelaide (Sharon Washington) in Wild With Happy (credit: Joan Marcus)

Colman Domingo’s Wild With Happy is a comedy about serious topics: Death, grief, healing and coming to terms with who you are.  While it’s true that these topics have been covered many times before what helps this play soar is Domingo’s take on them, which is alternately humorous, acerbic, and poignant.  More to the point, it’s grounded in a worldview that’s completely his.
Colman Domingo may be a familiar name to those of you who saw his Obie-winning performance in Passing Strange, or saw him in The Scottsboro Boys, for which he got a Tony nod.  So, it’s clear that he’s got acting chops, right?  But the surprise—and pleasure—was the discovery that he’s a strong writer, too.

Wild With Happy “explores the bizarre comedy that lies between death and healing.”  Domingo also stars as Gil, a man struggling to create the life he’s always dreamed of—that of a successful New York City actor.  The various parts of his life—family, friends, romantic relationships—all collide when his mother dies and he decides to have her cremated.  The more pressing question: Where can he scatter the ashes? What he ultimately decides is the story of the play’s second half.

Playwriting is very much like music.  That is, the rhythm of words can mesmerize you much in the same way that the phrasing of a musical melody can.  The dialogue, delivered by Domingo and his equally talented cast, is in many places a sharp staccato, one that volleys back and forth between characters with the focus and force of a Williams’ Sisters tennis match.

The dialogue also reveals the distance Gil is trying to put between his roots and where he’d like to be in life: “I went to Yale. “My urban is a little worn off.”

Sharon Washington’s portrayal of both Gil’s mother, Adelaide (seen through flashbacks) and his Aunt Glo deserves special note.  As the former, she was the doting mother who’s son seemed to be her best friend.  As Aunt Glo, she drew on many stereotypes of the nosy, loud and seemingly pragmatic black aunt that many in the audience would recognize from their own families.  However, she never descended into stereotype with this portrayal, nor she ever give the impression that she didn’t respect this character’s dignity.

The set design stands out, as well.  Since it’s a play about death and grieving, much of the set is composed of coffins.  However, as conceived by scenic designer Clint Ramos, the coffins are used for several inventive purposes: In addition to being the display in the funeral home, they later  flip up to become armoires; pull out to become a divan couch; open to become seats in cars, as in the photo below. Bravo.

Terry (Korey Jackson), Aunt Glo (Sharon Washington), Gil (Domingo) and Mo (Maurice McRae). credit: Joan Marcus

What’s also impressive is the way that Domingo handles the fact that Gil is gay.  I was struck by the fact that his being gay is just a fact of the story.  Yes, he and the male undertaker (Terry, played by Korey Jackson) have a fling in the funeral home.  And, yes, his good friend (Maurice McRae as Mo) is flaming.  But these are treated as facts that are details of his reality and nothing more.  Wild With Happy isn’t a play about being gay.  It’s achievement is that it’s a play in which a gay man works through his grief on the way to healing, all with a good sense of humor in tow.

UPDATE: Wild With Happy was supposed to close on Sunday, November 11, but has been extended to Sunday, November 18 due to the performance interruption caused by Hurricane Sandy.  All remaining tickets are $25!  Use code STORM when you click here, call 212-967-7555 or visit the Public Theater boxoffice.

Additional link:

• Wild With Happy at The Public Theater

Hard to believe our friends at The New Black Fest are about to start their third festival, but that’s exactly the case!  The festival is a collective dedicated to celebrating new voices in the theater, and kicks off with a conversation between Tony Award-winning actress Tonya Pinkins and PONY Fellow playwright Dominique Morisseau, co-presented with 651 Arts at the Classical Theater of Harlem.

All events are free and start at 7pm (except for October 13, which begins at 2pm).

Festival schedule:

Monday, Oct 8 at 7pm
The New Black Fest at 651 ARTS
presents
Live & Outspoken with Tony Award Winning Actress Tonya Pinkins
moderated by PONY Fellow Dominique Morisseau

Tuesday, Oct 9 at 7pm
black Odyssey by Marcus Gardley
The National Black Theatre

Wednesday, Oct 10 at 7pm
in collaboration with New Federal Theater and Legacy Productions
presents
Bodies by Carla Stillwell
directed by Chuck Smith

Thursday, Oct 11 at 7pm
The New Black Fest at 651 ARTS 
presents 
An evening of new plays by New Black Fest inaugural fellows Kevin R. Free, Mfoniso Udofia, Glenn Gordon
Mark Morris Dance Center

Friday, Oct 12 at 7pm
The New Black Fest 
presents 
New Black Music with Mazz Swift, Imani Uzuri and Andre Zachery
The National Black Theatre

Saturday, Oct 13 at 2pm
Silent Voices by Judith Adong
directed by Dennis Hilton-Reid
Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz Center

Full information on each event is on the festival site here.

This project is fortunate to have Kim Knox of Ubiquita onboard as a consultant.  It’s a timely piece of theater in which two playwrights–one black, one white–traveled throughout the South in the months leading up to President Obama’s inauguration in 2009.  They conducted over 100 interviews in an attempt to understand how people were making sense of the election of this country’s first African-American president.  The interviews were digitally recorded and then crafted into this piece of documentary theater.

One of the reasons the project needs the funds is that they’ve made a conscious choice to keep the tickets at $20, in order to ensure that people from across the cultural and economic spectrum could afford the tickets.  Of course, there’s an opportunity cost to them doing so.

The other cool thing is that it’s being produced at the Epic Theatre Ensemble, a presenting organization that has a long history of focusing on socially-minded plays.  Check out this project and support if you can or, at least, spread the word.

Additional links:

• Indiegogo page for Dispatches
• Dispatches on the Epic Theatre Ensemble site

@felamusical

It’s hard to believe that I first saw Fela! in December of 2009.  Since, then the show has gone on to win three Tony Awards the following year.  And they were well deserved, as can be seen in this short, month-long revival of the play that began on July 9 and runs only thru August 4. The show remains a thrilling, immersive theater experience.  Its politics come across overtly in the story of Fela’s activism through music, but also covertly in the joy of watching the triumphant celebration of black beauty on display and black bodies in motion.

The musical takes place on the night of the last performance at the Fela’s Shrine, several months after the death of his mother Funmilayo who, we learn, was brutally killed in a raid on venue by the military regime in 1978.

Storywise, this night is significant because Fela has decided to leave Lagos.  His mother has been murdered, the members of his compound brutalized (we learn how in a particularly powerful scene), and despite his desire to resist, he feels he and his family are no longer safe in Lagos.  However, in Yoruba tradition, before undertaking a long journey, one has to ask the ancestors for both blessing and permission to do so.  Early on in the show, we see that Fela is aware that his mother is trying to tell him something.

Fela! is not a passive theater experience. Not only does the ensemble physically break the “fourth wall”—running, dancing, cavorting up and down the aisles—but the show does an excellent job of approximating how it might have felt to have actually been in the audience in Fela’s compound in Lagos via call-and-response songs, sing-a-longs, and dance lessons (have you cleaned your clock lately?).  Too bad you can’t stand up for the whole show.

My first experience was with Kevin Mambo in the title role (who I’d seen in Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Ruined), but this time got to see Sahr Ngaujah, in the role for which he received a Tony nomination.  Both of these men are great actors, and more than rise to the physicality required by the role.  I remember Kevin brought a hard edge to the role.  My perception here may have been influenced by just having seen as the Commander in Ruined.  Sahr brings a different kind of passion and intensity to the role, which he completely inhabits. You can see the difference in his performances from 2010 to now in a clip from the Tony Awards performance.  At this point, he’s settled into the role even more, deeply embodying Fela Anikulapo Kuti.  He even stayed in character when he broke from the story to playfully deal with a an audience member, who wanted him to share the massive joint he was puffing on.

Photo credit: Sara Krulwich for The New York Times

Much of the original cast has returned.  From Antibalas handling the music; to the Queens, to Rasaan-Elijah “Taju” Green on djembe; to Sahr himself.  There’s great continuity among this group, which enables them to go from 0-60 in no time.  And you get to sit through two-plus hours of Bill T. Jones’s great choreography.

Memory is hazy, but some things about this version seemed different.  For example, “B.I.D. (Breaking It Down)” is a necessary party of the story.  Here Fela explains how he created Afrobeat by combining various musical elements—highlife, afro-cuban music, the heavy bass line and James Brown’s funk—into something greater than the sum of the parts. But this explanation felt more impactful the first time I saw it.

This version also seemed to expand the role of Sandra Isadore, the black American who, upon meeting Fela in 1969, introduced him to the ideology of black power.  On one hand it was a nice to see a new dance routine that involved books from across the spectrum of black liberation ideology.  After all, where else do you see dancers moving around with books by Malcom X, Stokely Carmichael, Angela Davis and others? That said—and while I acknowledge her considerable vocal ability–she ultimately annoyed the shit out of me.

Beyond that, I’m not sure what the musical gained by giving Sandra Isadore, here played by Paulette Ivory, such increased spotlight.  I’m not sure the musical needed to give Sahr/Fela a female vocal counterpoint.  She has an absolutely fine voice.  But there was something about it that took me out of the world of the Shrine, some kind of incongruity that was more distracting than additive.

Photo credit: Chad Batka for The New York Times

Also, there’s no discussion of Fela and AIDS.  That’s partly, I think, by design and the fact that the producers have framed the story around this last night at the Shrine.  There’s no way that this could be a strict autobiography (it already runs 2 hours and 40 minutes).  I bring this up not as a mark against the musical, but just to manage expectations.  Fela and AIDS is an entirely other story.  What you’ve got here is a focus on his resistance to a corrupt state and his fight for justice.

All that said, the crossover scene—where Fela makes the journey to the land of the dead to consult with his mother—is still powerful and visually thrilling.  The show’s great use of black light, screens, costumers and choreography expertly evokes Fela’s otherwordly journey.  And, like Lillias White before her, Melanie Marshall conveys the regal, groundbreaking figure that Funmilayo must have been to her son and to so many Nigerians.

And a special shout-out is in order for Ismael Kouyate, who hails from a family of renowned artists and praise singers from Guinea, West Africa.  He is part of the ensemble, but his voice is incredible in the way it pierced strong and clear through all the other sounds of the musical.  If you want to check him out, he lives in NYC and performs with his band Ismael Kouyate: Waraba Band.

The final scene with the coffins remains a sad but stinging critique of our society that seems replete with so much injustice and murder.  The names on the coffins—Oscar Grant, Troy Davis, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Rodney King, James Campbell, Sean Bell, Trayvon Martin, Citizens United—are powerful reminders that justice still has to be fought for.  It’s even more sad to realize that there will always be names to add.  However, what it does is bridge this look at Fela’s life (he died in 1997) with the fight for justice today.  In that way, the musical is very much in the audience’s face about need for justice that is still present.

Should you run to get tickets for this show? Absolutely!  Sitting there, you are reminded of how rich an experience Broadway can be.

Additional links:

• Discount ticket info
• NY Times slideshow: Fela’s Women
• Fela! on Broadway official

@felamusical

If you haven’t seen it yet, Fela! is a fantastic musical.  Less than 30 performances left, so here’s info on how you can get tickets:

Visit Broadwayoffers.com and enter code FEDGM77 or use deep link: http://www.broadwayoffers.com/go.aspx?MD=2001&MC=FEDGM77

Call 212-947-8844 and mention code FEDGM77

Or bring a copy of this offer to the Al Hirschfeld Theatre at 302 West 45^th St. (between 8^th & 9^th Ave.)

*Offer valid through 8/4/12 for performances beginning July 9, 2012. Some blackout dates and restrictions may apply. See Broadawyoffers.com for details.

@lynnbrooklyn

Lynn Nottage’s By The Way, Meet Vera Stark is a genuinely American play, one that puts the African-American experience at the center, but still manages to resonate about larger issues.  Funny and poignant, it’s not just about race, but about the price of fame in this culture and what happens even when one is willing to pay that price.

Honestly, I didn’t know much about the play before I saw it beyond 1) Sanaa Lathan was in it  (never a bad thing); and 2) it is a Lynn Nottage play. What the latter means is, after having seen Intimate Apparel and Ruined (for which she won the Pulitzer in 2009), I’m basically down for whatever she wants to write about.

What I discovered was a couple of things. First, when you go to a Lynn Nottage play, you are in the hands of a master.  Most striking for me was to see how she transitioned from the incredibly serious material of Ruined and drew on the 1930 screwball comedy films to create the world of Vera Stark.

Second, Sanaa Lathan is a revelation. By that, I mean that while I enjoyed her performances in Love & Basketball, Alien vs. Predator, and Something New, I didn’t get much a sense of her as an actress.  Her work was passable, i.e., you knew that if she was in a film, she’d do a good job with the role, but it wouldn’t be great.  In Vera Stark, she upends all of that.  Particularly by the second act, when she appears as an older, more bitter, slightly drunken star appearing on Nottage’s version of the 1970s Mike Douglas show, she completely disappears inside the role that I found myself wondering, “Where’s Sanaa?”.  Seriously, she should get a Tony nod just for channeling an angry, don’t-give-a-fuck Lola Falana.

(l-to-r) Stephanie Block and Sanaa Lathan

The story itself is about the complicated relationship between Vera Stark (Sanaa Lathan), a headstrong black maid and budding actress and her boss, a white Hollywood star (Stephanie Block), who’s desperately trying to hold onto her career.  When they both land roles in the same Southern epic–The Belle of New Orleans– it’s Vera life that is changed forever, and not necessarily in the ways one might expect.

It’s no spoiler to tell you that everyone lands the role they’re after.  The play’s multimedia aspect, courtesy of film clips shot in a style to suggest archival footage by Nottage’s husband, Tony Gerber (an award-winning and talented director in his own right) sets up the second half of the play, in which an academic panel discussion debates Vera’s place in film and black history.

Thankfully, the play goes beyond making points about how race functions to hinder black progress and tackles the larger issue of what it means to be a trailblazer and the price that actresses such as the fictional Vera Stark and the real life Hattie McDaniel were asked to pay.  On one hand they were asked to play completely subservient roles.  But, as the question is posed, were they able to inject these roles with covert acts of resistance?  The question, given how far our actors and actresses have and haven’t come today, is how should we view these actresses in historical perspective?

In fact, it’s precisely the issue of legacy that figures most prominently in the second act. What we see during the second act is Vera’s interview on the aforementioned 70s talk show played as it really happened, but also being watched and debated by an academic panel.  Daniel Breaker of Passing Strange fame, who played the musician Leroy Barksdale in the first act, leads this panel consisting of himself, an academic (played by Kimberly Herbert Gregory, who does a great job at channeling a female Cornel West) and black lesbian poet (played by Karen Olivio).

As Vera notes, she played in over 50 films since The Belle of New Orleans, but that is the role that continued to define her career and her life.  It’s a role that always comes up in interviews and it’s one that she can’t seem to escape.  Thus, her breakout role became her prison.

While the academic argument was good, I can’t help but wondering how that dialogue would’ve played out if staged between two actresses representing opposing career choices.  Stand-ins for, say, Halle Berry and Angela Bassett would’ve provided compelling point and counterpoint, given the challenges still faced by black actresses in Hollywood.  Both women are beneficiaries of the legacy of Hattie McDaniel, but they’ve made very different choices about the roles they take.  Bassett’s MO seems to be to stick with roles in which she can play strong, in-control black women and famously turned down the lead in Monster’s Ball, the one for which Halle won the Oscar.

But don’t let that stop you from meeting Vera Stark. In any theater with a play written by Lynn Nottage, you’re in great hands.

By The Way, Meet Vera Stark is at the Second Stage Theater in New York City and runs thru June 12.

Additional links:

• Information on the play at Second Stage Theater
• Lynn Nottage official

The Spike Lee-directed adaptation of the Broadway musical airs tonight at 9pm EST.  Check your local listings.

Additional link:

• All “Passing Strange” posts on Boldaslove.us

 

'Passing Strange' opens at The IFC Theater on August 21st.  It'll also be on IFC On Demand starting on August 26th. More information here.

Review and photos by Earl Douglas

Additional link:

• All posts on Passing Strange