The African-American Shakespeare Company Returns With THE GLASS MENAGERIE

The African-American Shakespeare Company is proud to finally present The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams. Originally scheduled for February of 2022, it had to be postponed due to COVID but now will take its place beside two other Williams plays performed by the company: Cat on a Hot Tin Roofin 2013 and most recently their hugely moving and well-received production of A Streetcar Named Desire in 2018.

As conceived and directed by Monica White Ndounou, Executive Director and Founder of The Craft Institute, this version will most definitely reflect the ethos of the African-American Shakespeare Company of "Envisioning the classics with color."

"I want to explore and illuminate the various ways people of color experienced the economic circumstances and family dynamics inherent in the play," says Ndounou. "Consider it a conversation between our artists and creative team and Tennessee Williams. A call and response of sorts if you will."

This autobiographical play catapulted Williams from obscurity to fame, and is well known for many things, not least of all the fierce and at times resentful matriarch Amanda Wingfield who though originally from means and very much a particular type of Southern belle, has what would now be called a "side hustle" selling magazines. This contrasts against her very introverted and heartbreakingly sensitive daughter Laura who collects delicate glass animals, and her elusive son Tom.

Noting that some critics have objected to the idea that a Black Amanda Wingfield would be so wistful about her southern upbringing and her place in it, Ndounou casts it aside and looks to her own personal experience as a guide. "As a Black woman and native southerner," she says, "I see this as an opportunity to bring the south and southern culture of the time alive for these characters of color as it would have been lived. While the experience of Williams as a writer was of course from a white perspective, books such as Our Kind of People by Lawrence Otis Graham outlines the ways that well-off Black communities engaged in some of the same standards and practices like cotillions and other things that continue to this day. So there is a lot to work with here. And I am here for it!"

What: The African-American Shakespeare Company Presents The Glass Menagerie
When: March 10-26
Where: Marines Memorial Theatre
Tickets: $35.00-$75.00 at City Box Office

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