Thunderbird's Musical Menu

Sanctified Explores Through Music How Diverse Attitudes are Transformed into an Inspired Unity

Marissa Lily, Mils James, Manny Walker, Emir Hardy, Chuck Timbers, Cheryl El Walker, Katy Cotten & Brenda Marks Set by Mark Clayton Southers Credit all Photos: Kim El One of the many things live theater does well is taking its audience to different places, times and moods through the power of story-telling. While this is a fairly obvious observation, this thought became especially poignant when, over a period of less than 24 hours, when I found myself on board a battleship in late 18 th century Portsmouth, England, then, 17 hours later, walking into a small Black church in rural South Carolina in the present day. The vehicles for this geographic time travel to places and times worlds apart were Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera, “H.M. S. Pinafore” and playwright Javon Johnson’s “Sanctified.” Both works, while musical comedies with morals to the story, came from diverse and rich cultural backgrounds. I’ve already published my review of Pinafore on my arts and enterta...

Review of The First Lady- An Autocrat Gets Her Comeuppance

Elizabeth Elias Huffman as First Lady and Doren Elias as Elish Photo Credit PICT Theatre PICT Theatre’s U.S. premiere staging of Turkish/French playwright, Sedef Ecer’s, political satire The First Lady opens on a government ministers meeting in a hypothetical country somewhere in Mesopotamia. Seen on video on a pair of screens on either side of the stage, the trio of officials (Art DeConsillis, Ricardo Vila-Roger and John Dolphin) scramble for a solution to the large-scale demonstrations taking place in the capital streets against their authoritarian regime, The president has fled the country, and the crisis seems to be growing larger with every passing hour. “What do we do?” they ask one another in desperation. They decide to enlist the help of the countr...

Art of Wise – Antebellum Horror in the Deep South

Karla C. Payne, Justus Payne, Sheldon Ingram and Adjoa Opoku-Dakwa Credit All Photos: Credit: L. Martello/18ricco If you’d want to experience a good example of how those in power use fear as a tool of subjugation, you might want to reserve a ticket or two for the world premiere production of Art of the Wise . The play, the fifth in playwright Mark Clayton Southers’ series of ten works, each set in a different decade of the 19 th century, centers on two families living on a cotton plantation in 1822 Deep South Alabama. Jenny Malarkey, Joseph McGranaghan* and Maddie Kocur The slave owning Wise family is shown in marked contrast to their enslaved cotton field workers, who, as was the custom, took the surname of their master. In the past I’ve said that playwright Southers is one heck of a story teller, and his latest opus follows suit by having a strong narrative that’s both intricately written, intensely entertaining and emotionally rousing. The drama wastes n...

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