Off-Broadway Debut of FREIGHT: THE FIVE INCARNATIONS OF ABEL GREENE Begins Tonight

From tonight, October 19, to November 19, Woodie King Jr.'s New Federal Theatre, in association with Castillo Theatre, will present the Off-Broadway debut of "FREIGHT: the five incarnations of Abel Green" by Howard L. Craft, directed by Joseph Megel, starring J. Alphonse Nicholson, at Castillo Theater, 543 West 42nd Street.

The play depicts an African American "Everyman" who exists in five dimensions of America's modern era. In each incarnation--as minstrel, cult leader, FBI informant, struggling actor and fallen mortgage broker--he is trapped between the American Dream and the American Nightmare. We witness the trials of a simple man trying to make decisions that will allow him to survive in what the great African-American poet Claude McKay called "this cultured hell that tests my youth."

The piece was initially developed by Craft, Megel and Nicholson at StreetSigns Center for Literature and Performance at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It was presented Off-off Broadway by StreetSigns/New Dog Productions at HERE in July and August, 2015, where it received glowing reviews and was a New York Times Critic's Pick. Woodie King's New Federal Theatre is now presenting the piece to share it with a wider audience, to elevate this resonant play to the Off-Broadway level and to introduce playwright Howard L. Craft to New York audiences, especially African Americans.

Abel Green lives the eastern spiritual idea that we must learn key lessons in order to move onto a higher plane. Until we figure it out, we come back. He appears first as a minstrel performer who offers blackface parodies to please people who, if encountered differently, might lynch him. Next, he's a faith healer who imagines himself an instrument of God while being manipulated for someone's profit. Third, he's fleeing from the Black Panthers after snitching on them to a fatherly black FBI agent who guided him on infiltrating the organization. Fourth, he's a struggling actor whose mentor and best friend is revealed to be secretly homosexual and dying of AIDS. Abel must overcome his shock and prejudice to nurse him in his final days. In the final scene, he's a former seller of subprime mortgages, broken by his guilt over exploiting poor and minority families, reduced to living as a can-and-bottle collector. All in all, Abel is a naïve villain, constantly caught in the conflict of surviving in a racist world by exploiting your own people. The New York Times (Laura Collins-Hughes) wrote, "this rich and thoughtful solo play is most concerned with... how to be good to one another within black culture, when the larger culture rewards complicity."

The characters, his various incarnations, are mostly introduced on trains, thus the title. The scenes are separated by spellbinding sequences of rail imagery, from Pullman Cars to subways. The word "freight" invokes both the legacy of racial inequality and the personal baggage that Abel must let go of.

Stage Buddy (Heather Anne Chamberlain) declared, "Playwright Howard L. Craft has perhaps done more with 90 minutes than some writers have done with entire trilogies" and deemed actor J. Alphonse Nicholson "a heavy-weight, a true pro to his craft." Culturebot (Katy Rubinin) asserted that few actors "possess the range this challenging solo work requires." Nytheatre.com (Mike Poblete) reported that murmurs of shock and agreement from the audience testified to the profundity that was found in the show.

IF YOU GO:

FREIGHT: the five incarnations of Abel Green
Previews October 19 & 20, opens October 21, plays through November 19, 2017
Castillo Theater, 543 West 42nd Street
Presented by New Federal Theatre, Woodie King, Jr. Producing Director, in association with Castillo Theatre.
Thur, Fri and Sat at 8:00 PM, Sat and Sun at 2:30 PM. (20 performances)
$45 general admission, $30 students and seniors. Groups (10 or more) $25
Box office: www.castillo.org, 212-941-1234
Producing company website: www.newfederaltheatre.com
Running time: 90
Critics are invited on or after October 21 (2:30 show). Opens Oct. 21.

Playwright Howard L. Craft is a poet, playwright, and arts educator. He is the author of two books of poetry, "Across The Blue Chasm" and "Raising The Sky." His poetry also appears in "Home is Where: An Anthology of African-American poets from the Carolinas," edited by Kwame Dawes and "Resisting Arrest: Poems to Stretch The Sky," edited by Tony Medina. His other plays include "The Miraculous and The Mundane," "Orange Light," "Caleb Calypso and the Midnight Marauders" and "Jade City Chronicles Volume 1: The Super Spectacular Badass Herald M. F. Jones," which has been adapted to radio and is the first African-American Super Hero Radio Serial. Craft teaches creative writing in colleges, public, private schools and to adults through the Duke Center for Documentary Studies. He has received the N.C. Arts Council Playwriting Fellowship and a Durham Arts Council Emerging Artist Grant. He is a two-time recipient of the N.C. Central University New Play Project. Craft is currently the Piller Professor of the practice for the Writing for the Stage and Screen program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Director Joseph Megel is artist in residence in Performance Studies at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and Artistic Director of UNC's StreetSigns Center for Literature and Performance. He was Artistic Director of Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey for six years and is presently Co-Executive Director of Harland's Creek Productions in Pittsboro, NC. He directed "Men on the Verge of a His-panic Breakdown" by Guillermo Reyes Off-Broadway (Outer Critics Circle Award) and in Los Angeles (Best Director Ovation Award nomination, Best Production Award winner). Other credits include "The Last Seder" by Jennifer Maisel at EST West in LA, Theatre J in Washington DC and The Organic Theatre in Chicago (winner of Kennedy Center's Fund for New American Plays Grant and other awards), "FREIGHT: The Five Incarnations of Abel Green" at HERE, and numerous regional theater productions in NC and Washington, DC including Derek Goldman's adaptation of Studs Terkel's "Will The Circle Be Unbroken" starring David Strathairn, Theodore Bikel, and Kathleen Chalfant.

Actor J. Alphonse Nicholson had previously collaborated with director Joseph Megel and playwright Howard L. Craft in Craft's "Caleb Calypso and the Midnight Marauders" and was directed by Megel in Athol Fugard's "Blood Knot" and two other plays, "The Brothers Size" by Terell Alvin McCraney and the Activated Art Project at the Ackland Art Museum in Chapel Hill, NC. Nicholson is an actor and percussionist. At California Shakespeare Theater, a regional theater in the San Francisco Bay Area, he appeared in "Fences" and the west coast premiere of "black odyssey" by Marcus Gardley. His TV credits include CBS' "Blue Bloods," "Mr. Robot Season 2," Fox's "Shots Fired" and Marvel's "Luke Cage" and BET's "TALESonBET," a hip-hop anthology series.

New Federal Theatre was founded by Woodie King, Jr. in 1970 to give voice to African American Playwrights, actors, directors, designers and young people entering the American theater. Its mission is to integrate minorities and women into the mainstream of American theater by presenting plays and theater events that relate to minorities and women. In 47 years of programming, New Federal Theatre has won critical acclaim and over 60 awards for its productions and its introduction of major African American and Hispanic talent. It has produced over 300 plays by minorities and women, more than any other organization in the history of New York Theater.

Pictured: Alphonse Nicholson in "Freight: The Five Incarnations of Abel Green" as a former seller of subprime mortgages, broken by his guilt over exploiting poor and minority families, reduced to living as a can-and-bottle collector. Photo by Dennis Cahlo.

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