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CANDLE on the PORCHA Griot’s Corner Revue
Come gather with us for an afternoon of music, theatre, history and community conversation as Oversoul Theatre Collective, Inc. and the New Bedford Historical Society presents the Griot’s Corner Revue: CANDLE on the PORCH, a presentation inspired by the tradition of 19th Century Black Theatre, where performance was a gathering place for entertainment, storytelling, education, social commentary and community dialogue.
This Revue brings together two very different kinds of performance that speak beautifully to one another.
We begin with FORGOTTEN ROOTS, an acoustic musical performance by MWALIM DaPhunkee Professor and Richard Buck, opening the afternoon with music rooted in African American, African and Afro Diasporic traditions.
It is music that reminds us that our roots are not always forgotten because they disappeared. Sometimes they are forgotten because we stopped listening for them.
From music, we move into theatre with BOSTON SHADOWS, a play written by Mwalim**, directed by Naheem Garcia, and performed by Ronald Pierre Louis and Brandon Scales.
Set in Boston in 1850, just two months after the introduction of the Fugitive Slave Laws, the play imagines a conversation between two extraordinary figures in the history of Black Boston: Lewis Hayden and Frederick Douglass.
Both men understood that the struggle over freedom was not an abstract political question. It was immediate, personal and dangerous. Boston was a center of abolitionist activity, but it was also a city where the realities of slavery, racial violence, resistance and the law were very much present.
BOSTON SHADOWS brings these two historical figures into conversation at a pivotal moment, asking what freedom requires, what resistance demands, and what responsibility a community has when the law itself is being used against human freedom.
And then, as with the best traditions of Black theatre, the performance does not simply end when the actors leave the stage.
Following the play, the audience will be invited into a conversation
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Event venue
Gallery X, 169 William St, New Bedford, MA 02740-6021, United States
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