HAVING OUR SAY...THE DELANEY SISTERS' FIRST 100 YEARS
by Emily Mann | January 26-February 6
Grand Theatre, Salt Lake Community College
The oral history of the centenarian sisters Sadie and Bessie Delany -
ordinary people who realize extraordinary achievements - for more than 100 years.
This simple story typifies the essential human condition of struggle and
achievement. "A window on a world now lost, full of love, a little pain and
a wondrous deal of hope." - The New York Post.
MA RAINEY'S BLACK BOTTOM by August Wilson
Free Reading | Monday, February 8, 7pm
Black Box, Salt Lake Community College, hosted by Grand Theatre
A 1927 recording studio in Chicago. Downstairs in the band room,
Ma’s musicians wait for her, their conversation focused on what it means
to be a black man in America. Upstairs the white record producers fret because the
country’s taste in music is changing, and Ma, their meal ticket,
is losing her appeal. And Ma herself is a force of nature who understands
the power of her music and the money it makes.
NEGLECT by Sharyn Rothstein
Free Reading | Monday, February 22, 7pm
Salt Lake Acting Company, presented by Utah Contemporary Theatre
Rose is an elderly African-American woman. Her once middle-class Chicago neighborhood has become rundown and overrun with street thugs.
During the 1995 Chicago heat wave that left over 700 residents dead,
circumstance and desperation force Rose to come face to face
with her own vulnerabilities of fear and isolation.
THE TALENTED TENTH by Richard Wesley
Free Reading | Monday, March 1, 7pm
Studio Theare, Rose Wagner, hosted by Plan-B Theatre Company
Inspired by W.E.B. DuBois' admonition that it was the duty of successful blacks
to lend a helping hand to their less fortunate brothers and sisters.
College revolutionaries in the 1960s (now well up the corporate ladder)
find themselves asking how much of their success
is an imitation of white culture they once rebelled against
and what is their debt to the class from which they escaped?
WALLACE by Jenifer Nii & Debora Threedy
World Premiere | March 4-14
Studio Theatre, Rose Wagner
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Wallace Stegner is the dean of Western writers.
Wallace Thurman was a young, gay black man at the heart of the Harlem Renaissance.
Both called Salt Lake City home.
Their lives intertwine in this rumination on the power of place and the meaning of home.
LADY DAY AT EMERSON'S BAR & GRILL
by Lanie Robertson | March 25-April 10
Black Box, Rose Wagner
1959: Billie Holiday in the last year of her life, in one of her last gigs.
Billie is joyful as she tells her life's bluesy tale in song and story
during this lovely cabaret-style evening.
Featuring more than a dozen songs that made Billie a legend.
WEDDING BAND by Alice Childress
Free Readng | Monday, April 5, 7pm
Black Box, Rose Wagner, hosted by Pygmalion Productions
In 1918 Charleston, South Carolina,
the ten-year relationship of Julia and Herman,
forbidden by law, faces its greatest threat -
not from the force of the law or the spurning of those around them -
but from the prejudices they have yet to admit to themselves.