IN Series is presenting its 2020-2021 season completely online and free through its platform, INvision, though paid access has additional perks. Their production of Orphée et Eurydice (which became available November 1) embraces the unique qualities of film with no regrets for the absence of stage production. Presenting Opera (a uniquely non-realistic medium) as film […]
About Gregory J. Ford
Review: Fannie Lou Hamer: Speak on It! A soul-stirring message on the power of the vote
Lyndon Johnson is said to have called her an “ignorant niggra.” In Fannie Lou Hamer: Speak on It!, E. Faye Butler brings this so-called “ignorant niggra” – Fannie Lou Hamer – to vibrant, embarrassing and encouraging life. The performance is riveting and subtle. The purported purpose of this production (as mouthed by Fannie Lou Hamer […]
Black Art in a Time of Uprising. The responsibilities of Black theater artists
The ongoing state executions of Black people, exemplified most recently and brazenly by the public lynching of George Floyd (with no repercussions to date for those perpetrating the brutality) has been the catalyst for diverse actions seeking change. Some actions seek to create an atmosphere in which such events would not be considered normal, acceptable […]
Jacqueline Youm, JaYo Théâtre: establishing a pathway to closer connection and inclusion
Jacqueline Youm, founder of one of DC’s newest companies, JaYo Théâtre, is from Senegal, the daughter of an International Monetary Fund economist. Watch below as this talented performer, in her striking monologue “Beautiful Burden/Je Suis Noire/I am Black,” describes her shock in first encountering the daily, brutally lived American form of theater of the absurd […]
Review: Romeo and Juliet and Man and Superman, ACA Radio Reps’ theatre for the ears
Adjusting to the changed circumstances brought on by COVID 19, Shakespeare Theatre’s Academy for Classical Acting has moved its 2020 graduating class performances to online audio/radio. In this situation, telling the story primarily by vocal production and sound effects becomes the main thing. Classical theater received only aurally takes some getting used to. It’s not […]
Video: NY Philharmonic plays 13-year old Jordan Millar’s arrangement of We Shall Overcome. Heart-searing
This is THE anthem of THE American civil rights movement that many other movements for civil rights around the world have adopted. You will have heard it sung in documentaries and the news coverage of protests from the 1960s. Listen to this version. It’s heart-searing. It soars. The arrangement written by this young lady (a […]
Artist Carlos Walker asks white America “What If?” it were you
The theater is the place where things are shown: that is, it’s a mirror where things that we don’t make overt in daily life are brought out in front of us to see. While we usually talk about the action that takes place on the stage, the primary and maybe most important drama takes place […]
The Lord Is My Shepherd: the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice
We ask: what art by artists of color sustains or inspires you? From Gregory J. Ford comes this answer. As a little Black boy being “raised” in the Church of God in Christ, the 23rd Psalm was required memorization. The ancient Hebrew scripture that Black folks were permitted access to accurately described the contours of […]
Review: Celia and Fidel at Arena Stage. Castro and the seduction of power
There are moments in this mesmerizing production of Celia and Fidel during which the entire audience holds its collective breath. We watch as a battle is being fought and a choice is being made. What choice will best move forward the cause of the Cuba’s socialist revolution? What choice will amount to capitulation to the […]
Review: Pass Over at Studio Theatre, brilliant, spell-binding, heartbreaking truth
“Kill me now,” says Moses. “What are your Promised Land Top Ten?” counters his side- kick Kitch. Thus begins two memorable, masterful, spell-binding and heartbreaking performances by Christopher Lovell (Moses) and Jalen Gilbert (Kitch) in the dynamic duet of despair and determination that is Pass Over, a brilliant – and, hopefully, audience-transforming – play by […]
Review: Einstein’s Wife: Serbian scientist Mileva Maric gets her due
ExPats Theatre’s production of Einstein’s Wife, (it bears the subtitle, An Imagined Encounter) takes place in an algorithmically graphed and projected after-life (Projections by Dylan Uremovich), where we meet the deceased Mileva Maric, a talented and disciplined Serbian scientist and her equally deceased, but more celebrated, husband, Albert Einstein, who is credited with having given […]
Review: This Bitter Earth, an inspired production of a boundaries crossing love story
The Theater Alliance production of This Bitter Earth by Harrison David Rivers is a lusty, delirious, time-suspending and pulse-pounding journey. It is also – as intimated by the title – both a vigil that is being kept for hope and “chronicle of a death foretold.” Instead of being related to us in a linear way, […]
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