POOLED: A GOSPEL MUSICAL DRAMA Comes to The Bowie Center for the Performing Arts Next Month

The Bowie Center for the Performing Arts and Li V Mahob Productions present the regional premiere of award-winning playwright Moses T. Alexander Greene's Pooled: A Gospel Musical Drama. Tony-nominated producer/Broadway veteran Valencia Yearwood (For Colored Girls, Thoughts of a Colored Man, The Lion King, Once Upon a Mattress) directs. This limited engagement will run December 2 and December 3 at the Bowie Center for the Performing Arts. Tickets range from $37 (mezzanine) to $42 (orchestra) and can be purchased at www.bowiecenter.org. Group sales (10 or more) are available by calling the BCPA Box Office at (301) 805-6880.

Pooled: A Gospel Musical Drama follows Delsin Jacobs' arrival to the Pool of Bethesda and his single-minded determination to be the next person to receive its healing properties. According to legend, the first person to step into the Pool after its waters are touched by an angel (troubled) is healed of any infirmity-physical, emotional, mental, relational, sexual. Driven to receive a healing that enables him to see what his heart looked like before he was sexually abused as a child, it is Delsin's interactions with others at the Pool that challenges his belief that he's the only one worthy to be healed.

Under the musical direction of Raleigh-based musician Carolyn Colquitt and with a score of soul-cleansing, life-giving gospel music, Moses T. Alexander Greene leads a stellar ensemble including Lynnette Barber, Allen F. Brown, Celeste Hinnant, Loretta D. Vinson, and vocal powerhouses Tamika Law and Jaali K. Boyd - both former Prince George's County residents.

Pooled premiered in 2018 at the Kennedy Theatre of the Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts in Raleigh, NC. In 2019 the National Black Theatre Festival (NBTF) selected Pooled for a mainstage production and named the play "one of the 25 best Black theater productions in the United States, Europe, the Caribbean, and Africa". According to Jackie Alexander, artistic director of the North Carolina Black Repertory Company and the NBTF, "It just jumped out at us when we saw it. Pooled is breaking the mold of what people think of in terms of traditional gospel musicals."

In 2021 playwright Moses T. Alexander Greene received the BroadwayWorld Award for Original Script of the Decade in the Raleigh/Durham market for Pooled. The work was also recently selected for an encore main stage production at the 2022 National Black Theatre Festival (NBTF) where the cast performed before four sold-out audiences.

"I hope audiences will come to see the show, experience the gifts of joy, healing, laughter, forgiveness and self-love, and feel the power of their own pool experience." --Moses T. Alexander Greene

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