DeSoto’s African American Repertory Theater announces 2009-2010 season

by PegNews wire

The critically acclaimed African American Repertory Theater (AART) will feature five outstanding works including a rousing musical during its 2009-2010 season. Performances throughout the season are Friday and Saturday evenings at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2:30 p.m. at the DeSoto Corner Theatre in DeSoto.

Seven Guitars, the sixth installment of Pulitzer Prize winning author August Wilson’s exploration of the black experience in America, will open the season on Friday, August 7, and run through Sunday August 30. A special preview performance of this outstanding play will be presented on Thursday, August 6. A winner of the N.Y. Drama Critics Award for Best Play, Seven Guitars is a full length, part bawdy comedy, part dark elegy and part mystery. Friends gather in the backyard of a Pittsburgh tenement in1948 to mourn Floyd “Schoolboy” Barton, a sweet talking blues guitarist and singer who died just as his career had begun to soar. The action that follows is a flashback to the busy week leading up to the character’s sudden and unnatural death.

The next performance, Master Harold and the Boys by Athol Fugard is a blistering fusion of the personal and the political according to a New York Times review when it opened on Broadway. This drama is a coming of age story about a white teen who has grown up in the affectionate company of two black waiters who work in his mother’s tea room in Port Elizabeth and learns his viciously racist alcoholic father is on his way home from the hospital. This play, considered by many to be Fugard’s masterpiece opens at the Desoto Corner Theatre on October 16 and runs through November 1. A preview performance will be held on Thursday, October 15.

AART is very close to selecting that very Special Holiday Season Production. Whatever the choice you will be highly delighted and thoroughly entertained. The performances will run from December 4-20, 2009.

Having Our Say, The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years adapted by Emily Mann opens as 103-year-old Sadie Delany and 101-year-old Bessie Delany welcome us into their Mount Vernon, New York, home. As they prepare a celebratory dinner in remembrance of their father's birthday, they take us on a remarkable journey through the last hundred years of our nation's history, recounting a fascinating series of events and anecdotes drawn from their rich family history and careers as pioneering African-American professionals. Their story is not simply African-American history or women's history. It is our history, told through the eyes of two unforgettable women as they look not only into the past, but also ahead into the twenty-first century. "The most provocative and entertaining family play to reach Broadway in a long time…" —NY Times. "…when the show is over, you want it to go on and on... Having Our Say is a must for audiences of all races." —BackStage. This production runs from February 5, 2010 to February 28, 2010.

The AART season will end with its first musical production, The Gospel at Colonus, adaption and original lyrics by Lee Breuer, adapted lyrics by Bob Telson and Lee Breuer and Music by Bob Telson. Ever wonder what would happen if you combined the agony of a well-known Greek Tragedy and the inspiration of the music in a Black Pentecostal Church? The Gospel At Colonus is an interesting blend of the ancient Greek drama of Sophocles’ ill-fated Oedipus Rex and a rousing modern gospel musical set in a church service. It runs from May 28, 2010 to June 20, 2010. A special preview will be held on Thursday, May 27, 2010.

AART's Reader Series will feature the South Regional Premier of A Song for Coretta by Pearl Cleage. A Song For Coretta is a lonely image-soaked testament to the civil rights icon seen through the random eyes of a handful of fictional mourners who have lined up to say goodbye to the beloved Mrs. King… brims with wit, personality and life-affirming energy”-- Atlanta Journal Constitutional. Run dates will be April 16, 2010 to April 18, 2010.

For ticket information, please visit the AART website at www.aareptheater.com or call (972) 572-0998. The African American Repertory Theater produces engaging, culturally, diverse theater, while educating the community on African-American History and the arts. AART is the resident theater company of the City of DeSoto.

Source: African American Repertory Theater