Gerry Mandel’s “Audition Piece” won First Run Theatre’s 2008 6th Annual Reading Festival (four plays out of nine chosen for production).
Now “Audition Piece,” directed by Marc Macormic, will grace the First Run Theatre stage April 18-20, and 25-27 (Friday and Saturday nights, and Sunday matinees) at the 233 N. New Ballas Road, […]

Woodie Award nominee Miss Fannie Belle Lebby performed her one woman show, “Ladies of the Blues”, including portrayals of blues artist/jazz singer Alberta Hunter and comedienne Moms Mabley at The Space. Fannie Belle Lebby has merged her active performing career with activist work such as Jobs for Justice. Miss Freida Wheaton’s Salon 53 sponsored the […]

Wole Soyinka, playwright, “The Lion and the Jewel”
The Lion And The Jewel opens Friday, April 18, 8:00 p.m.at Washington University: Edison Theatre St. Louis, St Louis, Missouri.
“The Lion and the Jewel” by Wole Soyinka is diirected by Ron Himes and presented by the Washington University Performing Arts Department.
VENUE
Edison Theatre St. Louis
900 Walnut Street
St Louis, MO […]

“The first time I hit a golf ball, I felt free!”
“When your way get dark, turn your light up high.”
The title comes from Roosevelt Hicks’ “Radio Golf” radio program…and the theme of “Blue Skies”…”Stay out of sand traps” ripples throughout.
On Aunt Esther’s porch at 1839 Wiley, “Everybody expresses themselves indifferent ways…different meanings…[even] scratching your head.”
“You […]

Wole Soyinka, playwright, “Death and the King’s Horseman”
I saw this play performed as part of the Wole Soyinka symposium in Carbondale, Illinois and I’m eager to see it performed again, right here in St. Louis.
The St. Louis Black Rep Company describes Wole Soyinka’s play “Death and the King’s Horseman” in this way:
Considered by many to […]

Wole Soyinka defies categories and boundaries: Scholar, poet, playwright, actor, human rights activist, Nobel Prize winner, former political prisoner.
Born in 1934 in western Nigeria. He studied at Government College in Ibadan. In 1973, he earned a doctorate from the University of Leeds. Dramaturgist at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 1958 to 1959. He […]

In 1936, when my father was 21, he wrote a song for Sherman Bowen’s younger sister, Lucille, that came to be titled “The Girl in the Little Blue Hat.” Lucille was sixteen when he composed the song, but had been perhaps eight-years-old when my father started dancing square dances with her at Ben Hill’s dances […]

The Black Rep Company’s website describes August Wilson’s “Radio Golf” like this:
The final installment in Wilson’s cycle of ten plays that examines the African-American experience in 20th century America, and the tenth to be produced by The Black Rep. The epic tale centers on Harmond Wilks, an Ivy League-educated lawyer who plans to declare his […]

I first encountered the word of the talented and entertaining Antona Smith (writing under the name Tayé Foster Bradshaw) at the St. Louis Writers Guild Wired Coffee Open Mic. When Antona told me about her youngest son and middle child Joshua’s choir performances, I asked her to share this work with you. Check out Antona’s […]

There is no curtain on the starkly evocative stage. We begin. After the first few minutes, our ears tune to the language of long-ago times, and we, the audience, drop into another world…a world parallel to the one Shakespeare created in his text, and at the same time, a world entirely on-center with the one […]