The University of Memphis’s Department of Theatre and Dance will be presenting its last production of the school year, Blues for an Alabama Sky.
The production, which opened April 16, is directed by Lawrence Blackwell, Assistant Professor in the U of M’s Department of Theatre and Dance, and will be shown April 23, April 24, and April 25 at 7:30 p.m.
Blues for an Alabama Sky, which was written in 1995 by playwright and novelist Pearl Cleage, is set in 1930 Harlem, right at the end of the Harlem Renaissance leading into the Great Depression.
The production, Blackwell says, is about five African-Americans – three men and two women – who deal with struggles such as women’s rights and southern Christian beliefs in the North while leading unapologetic lives.
“I taught the show in my African-American Theatre class,” Blackwell said. “Many of my students really enjoyed it because, in the play, you see characters that people may have never seen in a production before. You see men drinking constantly and women as prostitutes while also living unapologetically.”
Some of the characters in the production are Guy, a popular costume designer played by Tristan Parks, Guy’s friend Angel, a recently fired cotton Club back up singer played by Emily McCormick, Sam, a hard-working and jazz-loving doctor at Harlem Hospital played by Marlon Sinney, Delia, an equally dedicated member of the staff at the Sanger clinic played by Destiny Simon, and Leland, a recent transplant from Tuskegee played by Roman Kyle.
Also included in the U of M’s production of Blues for an Alabama Sky are the Harlem Poets. The Harlem Poets, who are two characters that Blackwell added to the production but were not originally in the play, are a man and women who read Langston Hughes poems while Blues music plays in the background during transitions in the play.
Planning and rehearsing for the play began at the beginning of the spring semester. Blackwell says that putting this production together has been a great experience.
“We began casting at the beginning of the first week of this semester,” Blackwell said. “And it has been such a fun experience. The greatest thing about this show is that many of the cast members are either first year students or students who have never been on stage before. I like to give a big thank you to Wayne Smith, our dance faculty member, who has helped me a lot with this production.”
The topics that the production generally focuses on throughout the story are the issues of gender and race in historical context. These controversial topics are one of the reasons Blackwell loves.
“The thing I love about this show are all of the controversial topics,” Blackwell said. “We have things like women’s rights, African-American rights, gay rights, all set in the early 1900s. It gives people the opportunity to decide on how to receive the messages this play focuses on instead of receiving one general theme.”
Tickets are still on sale at the Department of Theatre and Dance’s Box Office, which is open Monday through Friday from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m., or on the department’s website www.memphis.edu/theatre.
“It is a very fun and entertaining script,” Blackwell said. “With characters you have never seen before.”
