Based on a 5,000-year-old Sumerian myth from the land that is now Iraq, this live theatrical animation features 17 large puppets, 8 actors, music, video and the dazzling richness, broad humor and erotic imagery of the ancient texts. “The Goddess of Heaven and Earth descends to visit her sister, Queen of the Underworld, while a…
THE STATS Ten plays selected for reading out of forty submitted. Four plays read chosen for full production. Mandel’s “Audition Piece” made both cuts! Gerry Mandel, playwright THE GENESIS OF “AUDITION PIECE” I started writing this play about a year ago. It began as a result of a comment made by a friend named Harry….
Gerry Mandel’s “Audition Piece” won First Run Theatre’s 2008 6th Annual Reading Festival (four plays out of nine chosen for production). Now “Audition Piece,” directed by Marc Macormic, will grace the First Run Theatre stage April 18-20, and 25-27 (Friday and Saturday nights, and Sunday matinees) at the 233 N. New Ballas Road, DeSmet High…
Woodie Award nominee Miss Fannie Belle Lebby performed her one woman show, “Ladies of the Blues”, including portrayals of blues artist/jazz singer Alberta Hunter and comedienne Moms Mabley at The Space. Fannie Belle Lebby has merged her active performing career with activist work such as Jobs for Justice. Miss Freida Wheaton’s Salon 53 sponsored the…
Wole Soyinka, playwright, “The Lion and the Jewel” The Lion And The Jewel opens Friday, April 18, 8:00 p.m.at Washington University: Edison Theatre St. Louis, St Louis, Missouri. “The Lion and the Jewel” by Wole Soyinka is diirected by Ron Himes and presented by the Washington University Performing Arts Department. VENUE Edison Theatre St. Louis…
“The first time I hit a golf ball, I felt free!” “When your way get dark, turn your light up high.” The title comes from Roosevelt Hicks’ “Radio Golf” radio program…and the theme of “Blue Skies”…”Stay out of sand traps” ripples throughout. On Aunt Esther’s porch at 1839 Wiley, “Everybody expresses themselves indifferent ways…different meanings…[even]…
Wole Soyinka, playwright, “Death and the King’s Horseman” I saw this play performed as part of the Wole Soyinka symposium in Carbondale, Illinois and I’m eager to see it performed again, right here in St. Louis. The St. Louis Black Rep Company describes Wole Soyinka’s play “Death and the King’s Horseman” in this way: Considered…
Wole Soyinka defies categories and boundaries: Scholar, poet, playwright, actor, human rights activist, Nobel Prize winner, former political prisoner. Born in 1934 in western Nigeria. He studied at Government College in Ibadan. In 1973, he earned a doctorate from the University of Leeds. Dramaturgist at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 1958 to 1959….
In 1936, when my father was 21, he wrote a song for Sherman Bowen’s younger sister, Lucille, that came to be titled “The Girl in the Little Blue Hat.” Lucille was sixteen when he composed the song, but had been perhaps eight-years-old when my father started dancing square dances with her at Ben Hill’s dances…
The Black Rep Company’s website describes August Wilson’s “Radio Golf” like this: The final installment in Wilson’s cycle of ten plays that examines the African-American experience in 20th century America, and the tenth to be produced by The Black Rep. The epic tale centers on Harmond Wilks, an Ivy League-educated lawyer who plans to declare…