Annette Adams-Brown meandered her way through the crowd and continued to party on stage during her exhibit/scene for The Colored Museum last night. Adams-Brown is a costume designer and also board member for The Paul Robeson Performing Arts Company. The play was directed by Jackie Warren-Moore.
Debra Richardson (left) steals the scene without words during The Colored Museum’s “The Hairpiece” segment last week. Anne Childress and Katishma Grey play the talking hairpieces.
PRPAC’s Charles Anderson (rear) comes face to face with his inner demons during the “Symbiosis” scene in George C. Wolfe’s “The Colored Museum.” Issaiah Vegara plays the victim. The preview was staged this weekend at Art Rage Gallery. The full production by The Paul Robeson Performing Arts Company will take place in June.
August Wilson (left) with Bill Roland during Wilson’s visit to Syracuse University in 2003.
American Masters on PBS will be airing a program about August Wilson tomorrow. Wilson wrote 10 masterpieces (aka plays) about each decade of a 20th Century Pittsburgh neighborhood called the Hill District. We were fortunate to meet him during his visit to Syracuse, and he was very generous with his time and shared his work process.
Here is a Q+A session about Wilson in NYC that gets to the essence of his genius.
And speaking of throwbacks, special shout out also to Frank Vick for helping us develop an audacious appreciation for theater back in the day.
Director, actor and producer Ryan Hope Travis spoke about his new play Drafters, a parable at yesterday’s Vera House Report to the Community event. He called his creative approach “Applied theater.”
We congratulate Ryan Travis, the theater professional who continues to stage and curate great plays around the tenor of our times. His latest offering is “Drafters, a parable,” which uses local actors to create awareness about domestic violence from a perspective of prevention.
“Drafters…” has two more shows this week. Bob Brophy and former councilor Charles Anderson performed a brief excerpt during yesterday’s Vera House event.
Here’s an interview we did with Travis last year.
The cast of “Doors” (Debra Richardson, Jalayla Finster, Sheena E. Solomon and Sharleen Starks) along with advocates Loren Cunningham, Jennifer Nadler, George Kilpatrick and The PRPAC’s Karin Franklin-King participated in a talk-back session at CNY Jazz Central following the world premiere of the play.
Doors, which was written by Vanessa Johnson and directed by PRPAC’s Ryan Hope Travis, will run for two more shows on Saturday. The play is an emotional exploration of a group of ladies dealing with sexual assault in a family context.
Jennifer Nadler is an abuse survivor and attended the show. She also participated in the talk-back session and thanked the cast because Doors paralleled her own truth journey.
A Shout in Salty Water is a one man/one act play that serves up some answers to single fatherhood. But it also raises some questions as well.
The name of the play, which was conceived and performed by Ryan Johnson-Travis (directed by Joseph Trevino), was derived in part by the definition of Salina (as in Salina Street…think Landmark Theater, Rite Aid and the old Centro hub). Salina is defined as a salt pit or salt marsh. Many of the brothers portrayed in the show seem trapped in what seems like pockets of despair and closets of hopelessness.
Are the men dead-beats or just dead broke? Why are some voluntarily absent from their children? Why do they feel their pie in the sky has been reduced to crumbs?
These are some of the serious issues Johnson-Travis tackles on stage (and in the question and answer session). The performance takes you on an emotional roller coaster.
Maybe the most creative parts of the play are the actor/director vignettes (are they real or imagined) and the hilarious re-enactment of a dialogue with a Syracuse Post Standard reporter. But this is not about fun and games, which is evident when on opening night, Johnson-Travis fights through tears to sing about a slain 6-month old.
This complex experience is like being inside the head of a single father, yet inside the head of someone studying them/interviewing them as well.
The show concludes tonight. We look forward to a second act in the future.
Kudos again to CFAC and Johnson-Travis for collaborating on this must-see stage endeavor.
PRPACs Ryan Johnson-Travis and the Connective Corridor’s Linda Dickerson Hartsock take a break from their booths during Urban Cinematheque at the Everson Plaza on Friday night. This year were fortunate to meet and interview these two guiding lights in our city.