Monthly Archives: May 2023
Citizen of the World
Antonio’s Song/I Was Dreaming of a Son
Antonio, a young Latino man, speaks to us and to himself as he relates an event that shamed and shocked him to his core. While attempting to take care of Mark, his active, five-year-old son, he found himself in a quandary. The problem was that Antonio was at work and in a time crunch. As a choreographer and theatre artist, he’d rented a studio for three hours to create a movement piece, but his little boy, his “baby,” didn’t understand his Daddy’s need to concentrate on his art. With time running out and Antonio’s patience strained to its limits, little Mark’s loud distractions finally provoke him to frustration and anger. He suddenly grabbed Mark, shook and slapped him and screamed profanities at the cowering little boy. When he raised his fist to strike the crying child, Antonio suddenly realized what he was doing and wondered how a loving, caring father could suddenly become this out-of-control tyrant?
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Rock On!
Airness
What the heck is “Airness”? Well, according to prolific playwright Chelsea Marcantel, it’s the state of being so dedicated to and lost in a particular activity that a person loses all his hangups and finds himself feeling so free and uninhibited that he revels in a state of pure joy. And in this new production of Ms. Marcantel’s much-lauded production, first enjoyed at the 2017 Humana Festival of New American Plays, at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, the audience will come to understand this sensation.
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She Shall Overcome
From the Mississippi Delta
The late Ida Mae Holland took the first name Endesha later in life, as a tribute to her African roots. She earned a bachelors degree in African-American Studies at the University of Minnesota, followed later by a Masters and a PHD degree in American Studies. She wrote six plays, one of which was adapted from her memoir, From the Mississippi Delta. Dr. Holland won the Lorraine Hansberry Award, as a playwright, and taught at the State University of New York, in Buffalo, then became a professor of theatre at the University of Southern California. If someone had told the young Ida Mae Holland that these impressive accolades and achievements would eventually be a part of her future, she would’ve told them that they were crazy. But, to paraphrase the Pete Seeger folksong and the words of Martin Luther King, although Ida Mae didn’t know it at the time, She Shall Overcome.
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Speaking From the Heart
The Language Archive
George is a devoted scientist in every sense of the word. His career is his entire life. As such, George is passionately involved with the recording, cataloging and documentation of every spoken language that has ever existed. He’s the head of an institution called The Language Archive. It’s a library of manuscripts and recordings of the spoken word that seeks to preserve every system of communication in history, particularly those that are dead or dying out. George is an expert in his field but, despite being so learned and fluent in most of the 6,900 languages of the world, it’s ironic that he finds it impossible to communicate when speaking from the heart.
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Waitin’ For the Light to Shine
Big River
Based upon Mark Twain’s classic novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, this American classic is either revered or condemned. The novel still appears on high school summer reading lists but, thanks to a recent rise in literary censorship in conservative areas, is also banned in some areas. The story unfolds like a Southern version of Candide. Like Voltaire’s novel, it’s about a young man’s journey toward self-discovery. Episodic and peppered with pain, humor and lots of eccentric characters, Huck travels on and learns valuable lessons about life and the human race.
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