The African-American Shakespeare Company will present Noël Coward's classic Private Lives, directed by Clay David for six performances only this April. This draws their 2019/20 season to a close, a season that has seen the company mount a much-praised Othello, their annual holiday Cinderella, and the dramatic satire The Trial of One Short-Sighted Black Woman vs. Mammy Louise and Safreeta Mae.
"I have always loved Noël Coward," says AASC Artistic Director L.
Peter Callender, and Private Lives is a definite favorite. It's not only brilliantly funny, stylish, with spectacular language, but I also see it as a way to remind our audiences of a time when the Kings and Queens of entertainment were of a certain hue, and regarded as the best of the best. And Paris of the 1920s was that place where style, beauty and elegance converged. A time when music fed the soul, clothing was the message and language transported us. I know this will be one of AASC's most memorable romps."
For his part, the director,
Clay David loves the challenge of breathing new life into classical masterpieces as way of reawakening and transforming them. "I chose not to direct this work with color-blind casting and instead wanted to take the opportunity to eliminate the original white aristocratic milieu and shift the spotlight to a contemporaneous cosmopolitan culture. In this case the Black aristocracy and sophistication of 1929 where the characters are completely immersed in the context of the Paris Black Célébré."
As David points out in his Director's Note: "Noël Coward entertained an exclusive set of English literati and nobility. However, that fashionable set ran parallel with French Black cultural awareness and the zenith of empowerment of the 1920s. Blaise Diagne, brilliant Black scholar and politician earned a seat in the French National Assembly in Paris, and founded a newspaper called L'Ouest Africain Français; Paulette Nardal, Afro-Martiniquais writer and driver of the Black literary consciousness, created the "Négritude genre" and translated the works of the Harlem Renaissance; Severiano de Heredia, Mayor of Paris and the first mayor of African descent of a Western world capital; Bessie Coleman, the first black woman to earn an aviation pilot's license in Paris;
Josephine Baker, opened in La Revue Nègre at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées.
The take on the play is in keeping with the original mission of the AASC which came about as a reaction to the "color blind casting" that came into vogue at the time of its founding in the mid 90s. Founder and Executive Director Sherri Young saw that as something that instead of opening opportunities for actors of color in the broad sense, discounted their own culture and experience, which should be the basis for interrogating work from a new and fresh perspective.
Over the past 25 years, the African-American Shakespeare Company has presented 71 productions, including 4 productions of Macbeth, 3 of Othello and 19 of their annual holiday staging of Cinderella. "At this point we have accomplished all of the major Shakespeare works," says Young, "but I look forward to re-staging a number of them with enhanced production values as a means of giving our actors even more to work with."
Cast is comprised of Fummi Lola as Sibyl;
Leontyne Mbele-Mbong as Amanda; Dane Troy as Elyot: Lijesh Krishna as Victor; Summi Narendra as Louise
Info:
What: The African-American Shakespeare Company Presents Private Lives
When: April 11-26
Time: Saturday evenings at 8pm, Sunday afternoons at 3pm
Where: Marine's Memorial Theatre
Tickets: $40.00 that can be purchased via african-americanshakes.org
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