The Black Lavender Experience Explodes Boundaries of Queer, Black Theatre
Providence, RI – March 21, 2010 – Rites and Reason Theatre/Brown’s Department of Africana Studies is pleased to present The Black Lavender Experience: Theatre and Conversations Sparked by Queer Playwrights, Wednesday April 7th, 2010 through Saturday April 10th, 2009 in partnership with Brown’s Office of Diversity, The Brown LGBTQ Resource Center, The Creative Arts Council, The Brown Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities. All staged readings will take place at the Department of Africana Studies’ Rites and Reason Theatre in the George Houston Bass Performing Arts Space, Brown University, Churchill House, 155 Angell St. Providence, RI. Black Lavender is free and open to the public; seating is open and limited. For more info check http://blacklav.com, email blacklavender@brown.edu <mailto:geverandshabab@brown.edu> or call the Africana Studies Department at 401-863-3558. All are invited.
The Black Lavender Experience kicks off with a Brown Pride Month convocation performance by Mangos with Chili. Founded in 2006 by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Ms. Cherry Galette, Mangos with Chili is a touring cabaret of Queer and trans people of color performance artists, offering unforgettable performance in celebration of their lives, stories, survival, and the legacies they are creating for future generations of queer and trans people of color. Their performance on Wednesday, April 7 at 9:00 p.m. in The George Houston Bass Performing Arts Space precedes a weekend of staged readings and conversations inspired by the work of Isissa Komada-John ‘10, Andre Thompson ‘05, Ione Lloyd and E. Patrick Johnson.
Thursday’s program begins with Queering The Human as Art, to be held at 4:00 p.m. in the lower level of Churchill House. This provocative discussion about the politics of writing and performing Queerness will bring together Mangos with Chili and Daniel Alexander Jones, MFA ‘93, who performed and directed The Book of Daniel during last year’s BLX, with Brown Professor of Performance Studies Patricia Ybarra. At 7:00 p.m. Artistic Director of Rites and Reason Theatre, Elmo Terry-Morgan, will direct staged reading of Out of Bounds, a play about the tumultuous struggles within the 1968 civil rights movement, by Isissa Komada-John. The performance will be followed by a FolkThought facilitated by journalist and SNCC activist Charles E. Cobb Jr. of Brown’s Africana Studies Department.
The Black Lavender Experience continues Friday, April 9th at 7:00 p.m. with a staged reading of Andre Thompson’s My Penis: An Exhibition. Directed by emerging theatre artist Melissa-Jean Cooper, My Penis: An Exhibition is epic chamber theater exploring the body political of the other on the path to transformation and in the face of the Afro-Caribbean/Euro-American cultural hegemony. The performance will be followed by a FolkThought facilitated by Aida Manduley, ‘11.
Saturday, April 10th at 12:00 p.m. with a moderated discussion, Writing Black Lavender, featuring the four producing playwrights and moderated by Elmo Terry-Morgan. Aa 3:00 p.m. Michael Goldfried, ‘05, a graduate of the Brown/Trinity MFA Program and a director based in New York, will direct Ione Lloyd’s Dirty Little Black Girls. The FolkThought to follow will be facilitated by The Public Theater’s Jocelyn Prince. At 7:00 p.m. E. Patrick Johnson will stage his self-directed work, Pouring Tea, with a FolkThought facilitated by Daniel Alexander Jones.
Twelve years after developing the class Black Lavender: A Study of Plays with Black LGBTQ Content, Professor Elmo Terry-Morgan began to have visions of a weekend-long “experience” that would be a means of sharing the groundbreaking works he had discovered through refining Black Lavender’s syllabus: “Production opportunities are sparse for most Black playwrights. But for Black LGBTQ playwrights they are almost nonexistent. In order for these Black Lavender voices to be heard in wider communities they must be provided a stage, in fact, many stages. Being able to offer a platform for extraordinary talents such as Isissa, Andre, Ione and E. Patrick is an honor for Rites and Reason and an unparalleled opportunity for Providence’s arts community.”
Rites and Reason Theatre/Brown’s Department of Africana Studies is pleased to present The Black Lavender Experience: Theatre and Conversations Sparked by Queer Playwrights, Wednesday April 7th, 2010 through Saturday April 10th, 2009 in partnership with Brown’s Office of Diversity, The Brown LGBTQ Resource Center, The Creative Arts Council, The Brown Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities. All staged readings will take place at Africana Studies’ Rites and Reason Theatre in the George Houston Bass Performing Arts Space, Brown University, Churchill House, 155 Angell St. Providence, RI. Black Lavender is free and open to the public; seating is open and limited. For more info check http://blacklav.com, email blacklavender@brown.edu <mailto:geverandshabab@brown.edu> or call the Africana Studies Department at 401-863-3558. All are invited.
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The mission of Rites and Reason is to develop new works for the American Stage that analyze and articulate the phenomenal and universal odyssey of the African Diaspora. Over the years, the mission has grown naturally to embrace the expression of other cultural experiences.
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