Lantern Theater Company Announces Five-Week Extension of ME AND THE DEVIL

Lantern Theater Company announced today that its world premiere digital production of Me and the Devil, the Lantern's first collaboration with nationally prominent director and playwright Steve H. Broadnax III, will extend its streaming run through Sunday, November 21, 2021, to meet audience demand. This world premiere play with music shows the dramatic confrontation between the great American blues musician Robert Johnson and the Devil from whom, legend has it, Johnson received his extraordinary talent. After being poisoned in a juke joint by a jealous husband, Johnson - who wrote such blues classics as "Crossroad Blues," "Love in Vain," and "Me and the Devil Blues" - must use all his wit in a final contest with the Devil to keep his soul. Tickets and information are available online at www.lanterntheater.org.

Broadnax's directing credits include the premiere of Keenan Scott II's Thoughts of a Colored Man, which is now in previews and opens Wednesday at Broadway's Golden Theatre, featuring an ensemble cast that includes Lantern favorite and Tony Award nominee Forrest McClendon; Broadnax previously directed the play's 2019 world premiere co-production at Baltimore Center Stage and Syracuse Stage. He also directed The Hot Wing King by Katori Hall at Signature Theatre in New York, which closed in March 2020 due to the pandemic and went on to win the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Other recent projects include directing the world premiere of The First Deep Breath by Lee Edward Colston II at the Victory Gardens Theater as well as conceiving, directing, and choreographing The Hip Hop Project, his own award-winning full-length play that has toured nationally and was showcased at the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival in Washington, D.C. Broadnax is a tenured professor in the School of Theatre at Penn State University and co-head of the MFA directing program. Locally, he was recently named resident director at People's Light in Malvern.

Originally drafted two decades ago by Broadnax and co-writer Charles Dumas, Broadnax credits acclaimed actor Lawrence Stallings - who plays Robert Johnson in the Lantern's world premiere production - with helping him re-develop the play for film in 2021. "I could not have done it without Lawrence," said Broadnax. "When [the Lantern] introduced me to Lawrence, it was like a perfect fit. He's so talented as an actor, singer... he sounds and looks like Robert Johnson. We started the first two weeks or so on Zoom, and we would just work with the script. I would give him my research. He would do research. We would come together and go through all the characters in the play... It's like a writer's dream, a director's dream."

Stallings previously appeared at the Lantern in the 2004/05 season production of Death and the King's Horseman by Wole Soyinka and in the title role in Sizwe Bansi Is Dead by Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona in the 2008/09 season. His Broadway credits include The Book of Mormon (original cast), Hair, and Passing Strange, and the first national tour of Hair. He has also worked regionally with American Repertory Theater, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, American Heartland Theatre, and played the title role in Sam Cooke: Forever Mr. Soul at Milwaukee Rep and Delaware Theatre Company. Stallings' film and television credits include The Rebound opposite Catherine Zeta-Jones, Singing to the Earth Until a Tree Grows, Diagnosis X, 1000 Ways to Die, and A Royal Birthday.

Robert Johnson's life and legend are shrouded in mystery. His guitar playing was revolutionary, considered by many to be the basis for rock and roll. But his early death at age 27 in 1938 and a lack of reliable records from the Jim Crow era mean that we know more of his legend than of the man himself. Born in Mississippi in 1911, he discovered the Delta Blues style at a young age and learned to play harmonica and guitar. Other Delta blues artists remember a young Robert Johnson as eager but unskilled. But after a stay in Arkansas - accounts differ, but it was anywhere from six months to two years - Johnson returned to the Delta Blues scene with a deep mastery of the guitar that had been unimaginable just months earlier. This sudden explosion of skill and creativity fed the myth that outlived the man: that at a lonely crossroads at midnight, Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil in exchange for incredible talent at blues guitar.

Johnson completed just two recording sessions during his life: 29 songs for two albums recorded in 1936 and 1937. As captured on his recordings, Johnson's playing was highly innovative - influencing musicians from his contemporaries Son House, Johnny Shines, and Muddy Waters to later folk, country, and rock and roll bands and singer-songwriters, including the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, and the Allman Brothers. Johnson was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986. His songs were reissued in 1991 on the album The Complete Recordings, which sold half a million copies and won a Grammy.

"Robert Johnson's enduring story plays on an ancient narrative architecture: a human being makes a deal with supernatural forces so he can excel beyond human capability, but he pays a heavy price for it," said Lantern Artistic Director Charles McMahon. "There are examples of this kind of story around the world, among all peoples and all eras, but there is something utterly compelling about this one for us. Perhaps it is because Johnson's story forms a kind of bridge between the mythic past and the modern world. Unlike Achilles or Faust, Robert Johnson was a real person. However he came by his unique abilities, we know that they were real and that they were every bit as good as myth would have it because we have the recordings of his songs. In Steve Broadnax's telling of this tale, there is an extra dimension that makes it particularly satisfying. We see the hero not just as a figure who has adventures and overcomes obstacles but as a moral agent who grows before our eyes from a callow child to an admirable man, capable of great empathy and self-sacrifice. The blues is an art form that takes suffering and transforms it into something good - into wisdom, humor, and perseverance. The version of Robert Johnson that Steve Broadnax has imagined understands that his suffering in this world has meaning if he can pass on his hard-won wisdom to a world full of people he will never meet. Each new generation rewrites the hero's journey to fit its own needs. Ours is an age in desperate need of wisdom, empathy, maturity, patience, and generosity of spirit. It is a great joy for us at the Lantern to bring you Steve's telling of this classic American story that so embodies these qualities."

Me and the Devil also includes appearances by Philadelphia actress Ebony Pullum as The Woman, musician James Herb Smith as the stand-in for guitar closeups, and Broadnax himself as the voice of The Devil. The design team includes scenic designer James F. Pyne, Jr. (recent Lantern credits include The Plague and Othello), costume designer Marla Jurglanis (Othello and The Heir Apparent), lighting designer Shon Causer (The Plague and The Gospel According to Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens and Count Leo Tolstoy: Discord), and sound designer, music arranger, and guitarist Curtis Craig in his Lantern debut. Newcomer Isabella Gill-Gomez was the associate lighting designer and longtime Lantern stage manager Rebecca Smith served as associate producer.

Lantern Theater Company will delve into the themes of Me and the Devil on its Lantern Searchlight blog, available online at lanterntheater.org/searchlight. Published articles will explore the enduring legacy of Robert Johnson, the pioneers of the Delta Blues scene, the pursuit of glory, behind the scenes interviews with the artists, and much more. New content will be added throughout the production's streaming run.

Tickets for Me and the Devil are $20 per household/device and are available online at www.lanterntheater.org or by calling the Lantern Box Office at (215) 829-0395. Closed captioning is available. Ticket buyers will receive an email confirmation with a private ticket access link, which will provide on-demand access to Me and the Devil for one viewing during the extended streaming period, now through November 21, 2021. The production can be viewed on most internet-connected devices with email/web browser access, including desktops, laptops, tablets, smartphones, and select smart TVs. A Digital Fall Pass is also available for $35, which includes one ticket for Me and the Devil and The Plague (streaming now through November 7, 2021).

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