Photo Flash: Meet the Cast of Xoregos Performing Company's HARLEM REMEMBERED

The Xoregos Performing Company is proud to present Harlem Remembered: A Tribute to the Harlem Renaissance, a series of free performances throughout Black History Month spotlighting the drama, music and poetry of the Harlem Renaissance, at various venues in New York City and Westchester and Orange counties. The program features theatrical events as well as music, dance, storytelling and poetry. BroadwayWorld has a look at the cast below!

Highlights include:

- The world premiere of Exit, an Illusion, by Marita Bonner, one of the most influential writers of the Harlem Renaissance whose plays, essays and short stories focused on such issues as poverty, poor housing and color discrimination in the black communities. The play was the first-prize winner in the 1927 Crisis magazine contest.
- A new production of The Hunch, a comedy by Eulalie Spence, an accomplished writer who wrote fourteen plays during the Renaissance. Spence was a mentor to Joseph Papp, founder of The Public Theater, who called her "The most influential person in my life". Spence described herself as a "folk dramatist" whose plays focused on entertainment and comedy, a stark contrast to the artists of the day who wrote of injustice.
- A presentation of Tell Me Again, a humorous collection of Southern black folktales collected byJoel Chandler Harris and Zora Neale Hurston, and dramatized by Dave DeChristopher. Many of the stories have origins in African folklore.
- Musical performances of songs from the era composed by Duke Ellington, William Grant Stilland Kurt Weill and Langston Hughes. Pop and R&B singer-songwriter Tatiana Owens is the featured vocalist. A resident of Harlem and MTV "O Music Award" Nominee, her music has been featured on CBS, VH1, MTV, Logo, Lifetime, CMT, BET, USA Network and Showtime.
- A presentation of poems of the era written by Georgia Douglas Johnson, Langston Hughes and Sterling A. Brown.

The cast of Harlem Remembered: A Tribute to the Harlem Renaissance features Odysseus Bailer, Denise Collins, Jerome Arthur John, Amy Mack, Tatiana Owens, Spadaqué Volcimus and eight-year-old Milan Williams.

Shela Xoregos, Artistic Director of Xoregos Performing Company, is the director and choreographer. Xoregos specializes in hybrid theatrical forms such as dance and poetry and setting texts of plays to music. Her New York City credits include Antigone, Medea and, in 2014, Richard C. Goodman's Resistanceand Donna Spector's Eros & Psyche.

Fashion designer Raiza Peña designs period costumes ranging from sophisticated Harlem garb to rural duds. Ms. Peña designed Xoregos's Danse Macabre and its opera Circle of Haunts, both in 2013, to critical acclaim. Clark Baxtresser, an expert in musical styles of the early twentieth century, is the music director and pianist. A graduate of the University of Michigan, he is the music director and composer for StarKid Productions as well as Ani: A Parody, a new play that premiered in Chicago in 2014. He composes and performs in the Brooklyn-based pop duo TalkFine.

Lighting design is by Don Cate, former chairperson of the Theater Arts Department at San Francisco City College whose work has been featured by The Magic Theate, San Francisco Mime Troupe and Xoregos Performing Company. Shawn Lockaton is the stage manager. Lockaton staged managed Xoregos's Eros & Psyche and narrated Follow Your Bliss. Indya Burroughs is the assistant costume designer. She is a wardrobe consultant and stylist in the fashion and entertainment industry whose credits include Hollywood Divas and R&B singer Olivia.

Harlem Remembered: A Tribute to the Harlem Renaissance will be presented at various locations in Manhattan, The Bronx, Queens, Yonkers and Newburgh, NY. For more information visit www.xoregos.com or call (212) 239-8405.

Photo Credit: AnthonyCollins.NYC

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