another great play by Alice Childress: Wedding Band

 

Of all the fine plays I saw last year, Trouble in Mind, by the late, great Alice Childress, was my favorite, so I was thrilled to learn that another play of hers, Wedding Band, was being revived by Theater for a New Audience.

I saw Wedding Band last weekend and found it, if anything, even more brilliant, powerful, and unforgettable than Trouble in Mind. Directed by Awoye Timpo, it's performed by a terrific cast, with the extraordinary Brittany Bradford in the lead role of Julie, a black woman in love with a white man she can't legally marry. Though set in 1918, the play feels as timely as ever.  

Wedding Band has just been extended until May 22. Catch if if you possible can.

https://www.tfana.org/current-season/weddingband/overview

Meanwhile Trouble in Mind has just received several well-deserved Tony nominations, including best play revival, lead actress (LaChanze), and featured actor (Chuck Cooper). I hope that more Childress revivals are in the works--I'd like to see everything she wrote. She's one of the greats.

Brooklyn Folk Festival this Friday

It took me a few years to get myself to the Brooklyn Folk Festival, but, with a rich variety of terrific performers, music and dancing workshops, historic documentaries, jams, crafts, and eats,  it soon became one of the highlights of spring for me.  


http://brooklynfolkfest.com/.

One of these days, maybe I'll even catch their Banjo Toss into the Gowanus Canal. 

Yes, Karen Finley's back!

But then, she never left.

Brilliant, fearless, and deep, Karen Finley will forever be associated with a 1989 performance, We Keep Our Victims Ready, in which she applied chocolate to her bare torso, while speaking disturbing truths about sexual abuse and the claims of love that accompany it.

Outraged conservatives spearheaded the passage of a law mandating that NEA grants comply with "general standards of decency and respect for all the diverse beliefs and values of the American public," thereby leading the NEA to veto Finley's latest grant application, along with those of three other artists. The NEA Four, as they were called, sued the agency on the grounds that their First Amendment rights were being violated, won in the lower courts, but in 1998--after the Clinton administration elected to continue the appeal--lost in the Supreme Court.

Through the years since, Finley has continued speaking truth to power in performance and in print.
 
Her latest, Grabbing Pussy, is as timely and provocative as the title suggests.

You can catch her Sunday, August 5 and 12, at the Laurie Beechman Theatre at the West Bank Cafe, in New York City, an intimate space that's well-suited for her.

And on September 12, she'll be at the ISSUE Project Room, as part of the Brooklyn Book Festival.

She tours, too.