One Her Shoulders Hosts Reading of ONE IS A CROWD This Month

On Her Shoulders willpresent a staged reading of One is a Crowd by Beah Richards on Tuesday, June 18th. Adrienne D. Williams directs. Doors open at 6:45pm for a 7:00pm start with The Play in Context introduction byArminda Thomas, who situates the script in its historical time and place, followed by the reading and a post-performance Q&A with refreshments. Admission is by Donation ($10 suggested). The performance is at New Perspectives Studio, 458 West 37 Street @10th Avenue. R.S.V.P. to https://tinyurl.com/RSVP-CROWD

Beah Richards (Playwright) was best known as an award-winning actor. Among other accolades, she received a Theater World Award, a New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and a Tony Nomination in 1965 for her role in James Baldwin’s The Amen Corner. Most notably, she played the mother of Sidney Poitier’s character in the 1967 film Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. This performance earned her Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for Best Supporting Actress. In addition to her impressive acting career, Richards was a profound poet, director, playwright. and social activist. Born in July 1920, she wrote three plays during her lifetime, all of which explored the topics of segregation and individuality. She published A Black Woman Speaks in 1974, a collection of 14 poems that discuss her views on the impact of segregation and the blatant prejudice against women. Richards died in 2000 and, at her request, her ashes were scattered across a Confederate cemetery. Three years after her death, she was the subject of the award-winning documentary Beah: A Black Woman Speaks, inspired by her poetry collection of the same title. The documentary was created using over 70 hours of conversation between Richards and actor Lisa Gay Hamilton. The film went on to win the Grand Jury Prize at the AFI Film Festival.

Adrienne D. Williams (Director) Credits include FISH World Premiere (Keen Company/Working Theatre), The Gospel Woman (National Black Theatre), A LIMBO LARGE AND BROAD (New Circle Rep), She Kills Monsters (Yale Repertory Theatre), Crumbs From the Table of Joy and Angela's Mixtape (Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse), Nora (Julliard Drama Theater), Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Zooman and the Sign (The Paul Walker Theatre), Luck of the Irish (Atlas Theatre NYU), Dancing at Lughnasa (The Acting Company at AADA). Member: SDC, AEA, SAG-AFTRA, League of Professional Theatre Women.

Arminda Thomas (Dramaturg) is a dramaturg, director, and archivist. She currently serves as resident dramaturg and producing member of CLASSIX, and as a curator for New Perspectives Theatre Company’s On Her Shoulders reading series, where she has led explorations into the works of Marita Bonner, Eulalie Spence, Georgia Douglass Johnson, and Alice Childress. Selected dramaturgy credits include The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window (Jones Theatre/Brooklyn Academy of Music), Death of a Salesman(Hudson Theatre), Renaissance Mix Tape (Apollo Victoria), Trouble in Mind (Hartford Stage), Wedding Band (Theatre for a New Audience), Black Picture Show (Artists Space), Mirrors (Next Door at New York Theatre Workshop), Black History Museum...According to the United States of America (HERE Arts Center), Jazz (Baltimore Center Stage), and June and Jean in Concert (Signature). She previously served as archivist and dramaturg for Dee-Davis Enterprises, where she was an executive producer for the Grammy-awarded audiobook, With Ossie and Ruby: In This Life Together, and consultant for the film Life’s Essentials with Ruby Dee.

ON HER SHOULDERS was founded in 2013 to present rehearsed, staged readings of plays by women from across the spectrum of time, with contemporary dramaturgs contextualizing them for modern audiences. Since its creation, the OHS reading series has presented 63 plays by 51 writers from circa 955 to 1970 as well as special events on Theatre Women in the Suffrage and Radical Theatre Movements. A unique aspect of the Reading Series is the Play In Context component, which includes a dramaturgical essay that analyzes each featured play within its own time and place; a substantial playwright biography; and an introduction to a reading or performance by a dramaturg who brings a personal perspective to the dramatist and her work. All readings include a post-performance talk-back with refreshments. OHS also hosts a unique international database, 1,000 Years of Women Writing Plays, which is free to all: http://tinyurl.com/OHS-DATABASE. 

For more information about ON HER SHOULDERS, visit https://tinyurl.com/OHSatNPTC

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