Spring Play Reading Series
Presented by Bank of America and Southwest Arts Center
Additional Support Provided by Turner Broadcasting
Join us for readings of these works by professional actors and help us choose work for our upcoming season.
These are evenings that are sure not to be missed.
April 15-18, 2009 @ 7 PM
Southwest Arts Center
915 New Hope Road
Atlanta, GA 30331
Free and Open to the Public
Wednesday, April 15 - Elmina's Kitchen by Kwame Kwei-Armah directed by Derrick Sanders
Thursday, April 16 - Our Town by Thornton Wilder directed by Kenny Leon
Friday, April 17 - Bulrusher by Eisa Davis directed by Derrick Sanders
Saturday, April 18 - The Sty of the Blind Pig by Philip Hays Dean directed by Kenny Leon
THE STY OF THE BLIND PIG
Honored by Time magazine as one of the year's ten best plays and winner of the Drama Desk and Hull-Warriner Awards, this vivid and deeply affecting drama combines humor and power in capturing the sense of black consciousness in America during a time of transition from old to new. "It is eloquent, powerful, moving and beautiful…a consecrated act of theater." —Time
The place is Chicago's south side and the time the 1950s, just before the civil rights movement began to burgeon. Alberta, unmarried and in her thirties, shares an apartment with her mother, Weedy, an old-fashioned black woman who finds solace for her troubles in religion. Their constant visitor is Uncle Do, a sporty, down-on-his-luck gambling man who is the despair of his strait-laced sister, Weedy. Then, unexpectedly, a wandering street singer, Blind Jordan, comes to their door, searching for a woman he once knew. The others are puzzled and even frightened by their visitor, but Alberta offers to help him in his quest, and when they are alone, all the emotional and sexual frustration struggling within her bursts forth in a scene of tremendous eloquence and power. Out of the unsettling nature of their encounter comes estrangement between mother and daughter, which subsides to an uneasy truce when Blind Jordan departs—leaving behind a disturbing awareness of much that has been lost or changed, and of much greater change still to come.
OUR TOWN
"Thornton Wilder's masterpiece.... An immortal tale of small town morality [and] ... a classic of soft spoken theater."-NY Times
Grover's Corners, New Hampshire. Small, rural, out-of-the-way fictional town. 1901 to 1913. Life is pretty much the same for small towns in America. There is no apparent threat of global conflict or war. Such is the setting of Thornton Wilder's play, Our Town.
Received with mixed reviews at its premiere in 1938, but awarded the Pulitzer Prize, Our Town has become one of the most popularly produced plays of the twentieth century.
In Our Town, Thornton Wilder artfully manipulates time and place and relates the here-and-now-of a small, New England village to the timeless concerns of all humankind. He builds the action of the play toward the dramatic revelation that human life, however painful, dreary, or inconsequential its daily events, is both a precious gift in its own right as well as a portion of the mysterious plan that rests in the "Mind of God."
Elmina's Kitchen
Written by the playwright as a cautionary tale to his son, the story revolves around three generations of African-Caribbean men and the importance that conscious decision making plays in creating the tone of one's life. While exploring the father-son dynamics of the three generations, Mr. Kwei-Armah also examines the way communities can seemingly change but ultimately stay the same.
As the action opens in the dingy and tattered looking take-out diner named Elmina's Kitchen, Deli, the youngest son of the deceased Elmina, is pondering where his 19-year old son Ashley is spending his time while also anxiously awaiting his older brother Dougie's release from prison. As he prepares orders, his friend Digger (an enforcer for a local criminal gang) pontificates on the sad state of affairs in the world -- most notably the changing dynamics of the street and the introduction of a younger generation who have no regard for the old ways of criminal life. While Digger beats his own drum about his marvelous abilities to maim and destroy, Deli is haunted by his own inability to become the champion prize fighter that everyone expected him to be. He has instead opted for a way of life which does not involve violence -- much to the disgust of his only son Ashley who covets a job as a gang enforcer. Into this mix enters Anastasia, a self-help book toting cook who has romantic intentions towards Deli. Fast on her heels enters Clifton, Deli's deadbeat dad, who left his family to return to Grenada 20 years before. Soon battle lines are drawn as Anastasia, Digger, Ashley, and Clifton vie for Deli's soul and empowerment. Throughout, Baygee, the friend who emigrated to Britain with Clifton and Elmina, wanders in as a voice of jubilant life in a mix of death and decay.
Bulrusher
"Mixing together issues of family, heritage, race and love, Eisa Davis' Bulrusher delivers a powerful impact with a poetic, deeply realized script and story." - Talkin' Broadway
In Boonville, California, outcast for her clairvoyance and her lack of family, Bulrusher finds out how much she doesn't know when she falls for a stranger from Alabama. But will this visitor open up her insular world, or destroy it? Bulrusher voyages toward self-discovery in a town where the realities of race are submerged in water, and love keeps the company of redwoods. Bulrusher was a finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Drama.
