Its a year sure to generate some heated post-show discussions.
Juneteenth Legacy Theatre pays tribute this month to Pulitzer- and Tony-award-winning playwright August Wilson. Guest artists from the St. Louis Black Rep theater company, Ron Himes and Linda Kennedy, will present excerpted scenes and monologues from all 10 of Wilsons plays. Himes and Kennedy, along with Obie-winning New York director Sue Lawless, direct, act and choreograph seven other Juneteenth Jamboree-staged readings. They will also judge the Juneteenth@Apollo community talent showcases. Three Louisville playwrights Gloria Pressley-McGruder, Muriel Wharton and Caroleanne Conerly-Griffin will premiere their plays at the festival as well.
This years festival focuses on the African-American family, both in comedies and dramas. Lorna Littleway, founder and producing director of Juneteenth Legacy Theatre, calls this festival particularly politically controversial, which is fitting in an election year, she says. Shes thrilled that members of St. Louis Black Rep will help with the Wilson salute. Its been exciting to read all 10 of Wilsons plays and select scenes that underscore his unique ability to mix the personal and historical, she says.
Other plays explore contemporary issues, such as th
e toll of war on soldiers and their families. One of the more controversial plays at this years Jamboree is Through the Roof, a musical drawing on Zydeco traditional music that illustrates the Faustian-like history of flooding in New Orleans. Playwright Rick Mitchell says, Like the Great Flood of the Bible, the Lisbon Earthquake and the first atomic bombing, Hurricane Katrina is an epic event. The story of Katrina, which is still being written, includes elements that are mythical, natural and, most importantly, historical and political.
The horrors that ensued have more basis in history and racial inequality than in nature, Mitchell says. Calling Hurricane Katrina a natural disaster is, in fact, highly deceptive, because there is nothing natural about poor people being disproportionately affected by a flood that could have been prevented. While the social injustices related to Katrina are enormous, and often race-related, theres a mythical side to this event too, which cannot be reduced to social explanation. Yet even myth, which helps people to grapple with forces that seem beyond them, cannot escape history.
The play moves through time, from the mid-19th centurys Yellow Fever epidemic to racial conflict on the levees in the early 20th century and to the Great Flood of 1927. The play incorporates mythical elements that help to emphasize the epic role played by New Orleans throughout an American history that, even today, cant seem to shake the rampant racism and greed that help to make nature disastrous, Mitchell says.
Red Program:
June 6
8 p.m. A Tribute to August Wilson
June 7
2 p.m. Breaking Down Monologues workshop & Youth Apollo Contestant Performance
5:30 p.m. Juneteenth@Apollo Round 1
8 p.m. Bringing Back Josephine by Gail Parrish
Black Program:
June 13
8 p.m. Ghosts With Insomnia by Richard Fewell
8 p.m. A Soldiers Daughter by Gloria Pressley-McGruder
June 14
2 p.m. Breaking Down Monologues workshop & Youth Apollo Contestant Performance
5:30 p.m. Juneteenth@Apollo Round 2
8 p.m. Through the Roof, a musical by Rick Mitchell and Max Kinberg.
Blue Program:
June 20
8 p.m. Pomp and Circumstance by Roger Collins
June 21:
2 p.m. Breaking Down Monologues workshop
5:30 p.m. Juneteenth@Apollo Round 3
8 p.m. The Heart of the Beast by Caroleanne Conerly-Griffin
8 p.m. The Stoop by Muriel Wharton
Contact the writer at leo@leoweekly.com
9th Annual Juneteenth Jamboree
of New Plays
June 6-21
Actors Theatre
316 W. Main St.
This article appears in June 3, 2008.