BLUE DOOR Comes to Aurora Theatre Company Next Month

Aurora Theatre Company will launch the penultimate show of its 32nd season with Tanya Barfield’s BLUE DOOR. Darryl V. Jones (Detroit ‘67, The Royale) directs Michael J. Asberry (Paradise Blue, The Incrementalist, The Bluest Eye, Exit Strategy, Satellites) and James WDL Mercer II in this two-hander with music exploring the joy and pain, suffering and resiliency of Black men in America from enslavement and Jim Crow through Black Power. 

BLUE DOOR will be presented in-person on Aurora’s mainstage from April 19-May 19 (Opening Night: April 25). 

Aurora will also offer a week of streaming BLUE DOOR performances for audiences to enjoy in their homes. Streaming performances will run concurrently with in-person performances from May 14-19. 

Director Darryl V. Jones says about the play: “The first time I read BLUE DOOR I said, ‘This play is about my life.’ It mirrors so many of the internal struggles that I have dealt with as part of the first middle-class generation of Blacks to experience the experiment of integration in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Montgomery County, Maryland…The play is a fascinating psychological study heavy on the harsh realities that Black men have faced as a result of ancestral trauma being passed down from one generation to the next, and a spirituality that connects back to Africa.”

Artistic Director Josh Costello adds: “I'm so pleased to welcome Darryl V. Jones back to Aurora to direct the powerful and beautiful BLUE DOOR. Our audiences loved Darryl's work on The Royale and Detroit '67, and I know his perspective and talents will make for an insightful and passionate production.”

SYNOPSIS: Tanya Barfield’s two-man play, BLUE DOOR, puts Lewis, a high-achieving Black mathematics professor, in conversation with three generations of his ancestors over the course of a fevered dream or night of sleepless delusion as he wrestles with his own sense of self and cultural identity. Estranged from his white wife, who accuses him of being out of touch with his heritage for refusing to attend the Million Man March, Lewis must journey through the past in order to determine his future. The ancestral visitations he receives call upon joy and pain, suffering and resiliency, music and song to situate Lewis in a long lineage of Black men in America from enslavement and Jim Crow to Black Power.

Post-show discussions for BLUE DOOR will be led by Aurora staff or members of the Creative Team, and hosted after the show on the following days: Friday, April 26; Tuesday, April 30; Friday, May 3 (in conjunction with a Community Night event); Wednesday, May 8; Thursday, May 14. Aurora INsights, an in-depth conversation about themes of the play offered to Aurora donors of any level, will be held at 4 p.m. on Saturday, May 11. 

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