Friday, April 19, 2024
The triumphant, masterful production of The Black Clown—that performed its New York City premiere from July 24-27th as part of the 2019 annual Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival—offered a theatricalized glimpse into the journey and experiences of a Black person in America. When I encountered what bass-baritone Davóne Tines—who performed the title role and adapted the piece along with composer Michael Schachter from Langston Hughes’ poem about a Black man’s resilience against a legacy of oppression—said about The Black Clown, I knew had to witness it firsthand: “When I first read The Black Clown it was like receiving a revelation that
Tag: black
A STRANGE LOOP Raises the Bar for Queer Black Representation and Sets a New Standard for Musicals Today
I first encountered A Strange Loop in 2015 at the Musical Theatre Factory when it was still located in a gay porn video warehouse above (the original) Drama Bookstore just around the corner of Port Authority. It was a mixed bag evening with various composers and lyricists trying out their works on performers, both eager to be heard amongst an audience of supportive peers instead of cruel critics. The song, which is the second-to-last 13 o’clock number for A Strange Loop now called “The Memory Song,” featured lyrics sung in rapid speed with mournful wailing by Larry Owens (the unconventional
Black Light at Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater
Jomama Jones is a celestial goddess, a High Priestess from the cosmos who has come down to Earth through the channel of Daniel Alexander Jones, to inspire and teach (but never to preach) in Black Light, a godsend of a production now playing at Joe's Pub at the Public Theater, as part of the mainstage season, through March 25th. There's even a specialty cocktail to mark the occasion, featuring activated charcoal with a purple glow stick as a stirrer to offset the darkness. We could all use a bit of aura cleansing and illumination at such crossroads, and an evening with