Classix: A Reading Series
CLASSIX Reading Series Featuring Plays by Alice Childress, Kathleen Collins, Bill Gunn, and Ron Milner at Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, May 22-23, 2017
Classix
CLASSIX, a reading series of plays curated by director Awoye Timpo, features plays by Alice Childress, Kathleen Collins, Bill Gunn, and Ron Milner, just four out of a long line of writers whose extraordinary plays were produced in the 20th century, on Monday, May 22 and Tuesday, May 23 at 4:30pm + 6:30pm at The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, located at The Graduate Center, CUNY, 365 5th Avenue (between 34th and 35th Streets), NYC. FREE.
MONDAY, MAY 22
4:30pm
Wine in the Wilderness by Alice Childress (1969)
Directed by Jade King Carroll
Featuring Miriam Hyman, Ruffin Prentiss, Jillian Walker, Charles Weldon, Zenzi Williams
In the midst of a Harlem riot is Wine in the Wilderness, a relentlessly truthful play about a black woman factory worker named Tommy and her new artist friend, Bill. When Bill invites Tommy into his home to become the newest subject of his triptych on black womanhood, race, sex, and class tensions arise. Childress paints a courageous portrait of black life, love, and longing through the voice of a woman misunderstood not only by white society, but by her own people.
6:30pm
What the Wine-Sellers Buy by Ron Milner (1974)
Directed by Nicole A. Watson
Featuring MaameYaa Boafo, Chakeefe Gordon, Brian D. Coats, Medina Senghore Collie, Suzzanne Douglas, Trey Santiago, Adam McNulty, Melanie Nichols-King, Keith Randolph Smith, Count Stovall
Written in 1974, What the Wine-Sellers Buy was originally produced by Joseph Papp at the New York Shakespeare Festival at Lincoln Center. Poverty, crime, and corruption run rampant in Detroit’s inner city during the 1950s and 1960s. The play centers around Steve Carlton, a carefree high school student, who wrestles between his dream to become a professional basketball player and the other possibilities in his life. In Ron Milner’s moral and musical play, Steve must figure out if he will follow his sly neighbor, Rico, down a path of drug-dealing, exploitation, and pimping, or forge his own way through the world.
Followed by a brief discussion with Woodie King, Jr., Artistic Director of the New Federal Theater.
TUESDAY, MAY 23
4:30pm
The Forbidden City by Bill Gunn (1989)
Directed by Awoye Timpo
Featuring Guy Davis, Marchant Davis, Bjorn DuPaty, Rachel Leslie, Doron Mitchell, Lee Aaron Rosen, Allie Woods
Bill Gunn’s final play, The Forbidden City, premiered at New York’s Public Theater in 1989. The bonds of a middle class Black family in Philadelphia circa 1936 are tested by the specter of a tragedy that occurred years ago in the Jim Crow south. Poetic, yet haunting “The Forbidden City” is a timely depiction a family struggling to emerge from the psychological trauma and violence inflicted on African Americans in the early 20th century that continues to the present.
6:30pm
The Brothers by Kathleen Collins (1982)
Directed by Seret Scott
Featuring Crystal Dickinson, Chalia La Tour, Margaret Odette, Carra Patterson, Tiffany Rachelle Stewart, Lizan Mitchell, Elizabeth Van Dyke
In this memory-drama Collins weaves together a series of scenes and monologues about black men who “should have been born white’’ because they “spent their entire lives trying to jump out of their skins.’’ The Brothers (1982) was originally produced by the Women’s Project at the American Place Theater.
Followed by a brief discussion with Seret Scott, original cast member, moderated by Crystal A. Dickinson.
Taylor Barfield, Zoey Martinson, A.J. Muhammad and Jillian Walker served as dramaturgs for the series.