Wedding Band by
Alice Childress
April 23 – May 15, 2022
In 2020 the Classix team began a collaboration with Theatre for a New Audience (TFANA) to explore numerous plays in the Black classical canon. Through numerous conversations, the Classix team chose to begin this collaboration with a reading of a play by Alice Childress and selected Wedding Band. A reading was presented at TFANA in February 2020.
In 2022, the theater produced a full production of the play.
Set in the deep south at the end of World War I during the flu epidemic, Alice Childress’s seldom-produced masterpiece is one of American drama’s most mercilessly revealing tales of interracial love and community. A jewel of theatrical concision and detail, the play traces a devoted couple’s caustic confrontations with anti-miscegenation laws, vicious family racism, community disapproval, a deadly disease, and their own long-buried feelings.
Creative Team
Directed by Awoye Timpo
Scenic design by Jason Ardizzone-West
Costume design by Qween Jean
Lighting design by Stacey Derosier
Sound design by Rena Anakwe
Music composition by Alphonso Horne
Dramaturgy by Arminda Thomas
Music direction by Nehemiah Luckett
Movement direction by Renee Robinson
Voice direction by Andrew Wade
Dialect coaching by Cherie Corinne Rice
TFANA Resident Dramaturg Jonathan Kalb
Cast
Brittany Bradford as Julia Augustine
Rosalyn Coleman as Lula Green
Veanne Cox as Herman’s Mother
Rebecca Haden as Annabelle
Brittany-Laurelle as Mattie
Sofie Nesanelis as Princess
Renrick Palmer as Nelson Green
Phoenix Noelle as Teeta
Thomas Sadoski as Herman
Elizabeth Van Dyke as Fanny Johnson
Max Woertendyke as Bell Man