By The Way, Meet Vera Stark
Urban Arts Center
A 70-year journey through the life of Vera Stark, a head Black maid and budding actress – a funny and irreverent look at racial stereotypes during the Golden Age of Hollywood.
Vera Stark works as a maid to Gloria Mitchell, an aging movie star grasping at her fading career. As Gloria fades more, Vera becomes more noticeable. Rubbing shoulders with studio heads and movie directors, Vera lands a prominent role in a costume epic starring Gloria. Vera’s portrayal of a slave turns out to be groundbreaking and career-making. However, decades later scholars and film buffs still argue about Vera’s legacy in Hollywood, and the impact that race had on her controversial career. Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Lynn Nottage uses the pace and satire of 1930s movie comedies to take you on a seventy-year journey through Vera’s life and the cultural climate that shaped her.
Fairview
Bishop arts theater center in partnership with undermain theater
REGIONAL PREMIERE
At the Frasier household, preparations for Grandma’s birthday party are underway, Beverly is holding on to her sanity by a thread to make sure this party is perfect, but her sister is drinking, her husband can’t seem to listen, her brother is MIA, her daughter is a teenager and maybe nothing is what it seems in the first place...Fairview, recipient of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for drama, begins as an easygoing comedy about a middle-class black family gathering for a birthday dinner and ends somewhere else entirely. A play about race, though not only about race, it ultimately brings the audience into the actors’ community to face the deep-seated prejudices of our society.
Love You Madly: A Tribute to Duke Ellington
Urban arts center
Love You Madly: Celebrating the Music of Duke Ellington transports you to 1920’s New York City at the height of the Harlem Renaissance. Told through music, dance and spoken word, Love You Madly highlights the glitz and glamour of the time with a big band orchestra as the backdrop.
Bars and Measures
Bishop arts theater center
REGIONAL PREMIERE
Bars and Measures is the fascinating tale of two brothers. One a classical pianist. The other a jazz bass player. One a Christian. The other a Muslim. One living in freedom. The other in jail. Separated by bars, the brothers try to reconcile their differences through the language they know best. Music. A beautiful journey through faith, family, melody and time.
An Oak Cliff Carol
Urban arts center
Elana Scrooge has built a successful cosmetic empire on the backs of the people she’s had to step on as she ascended to the top. For one night, three Oak Cliff spirits give Elana a reality check and attempt to show her the err of her ways. Set to be a holiday classic, An Oak Cliff Carol tells the familiar Dickens story through R&B, gospel and soul music.
BLK Experience Museum
Urban arts center
BLK Experience Museum, an innovative pop-up museum dedicated to celebrating black lives and black excellence. Transport into the black experience at this fully immersive popup art gallery that spans black lives, black excellence, black history and black triumph. Each room is designed by eight artists specifically selected to bring the black experience to life in their own perspective
The First Noel
Jubilee theater | fort worth, TXT
REGIONAL PREMIERE
The First Noel is a heartwarming musical that flashes us back to Harlem in 1985 and follows three generations of a family affected by the tragic loss of a loved one. When an unexpected visitor turns things upside-down, they also provide long-absent joy just in time for Christmas. With a score infused with Gospel, Pop and re-imagined holiday carols and classics, “The First Noel” delivers the Christmas Spirit to audiences in a fresh, new way. The sound of today combines with the holiday nostalgia of yesterday, creating a jubilant answer to the perennial Holiday classic.
Detroit ‘67
jubilee theatre
Winner of the Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama, this thought-provoking, resonant play sizzles to the soundtrack of the 1960s.
In 1967 Detroit, Motown has hit its groove and the Poindexter siblings, Chelle and Lank, make ends meet by hosting parties in their basement. However, Lank and his friend Sly have dreams beyond the cellar shindigs—despite Chelle’s resistance. When Lank then brings home a mysterious white woman, the family’s simmering disagreements explode—as their streets erupt in riots—and life becomes a lot more dangerous.
Diner En Blanc
JACK PRODUCTIONS
Le Diner en Blanc, the popular picnic-style Parisian dinner party characterized by its famous monochromatic color scheme. 3500 of the elegant white dressed wave of dinner guests invade one of the most prestigious public locations of the city. Bringing their own tables and chair, guest party in the secret location with old and new friends.
Intimate Apparel
stephen f. austin university
Intimate Apparel, set in 1905 in turn of the century New York, tells the story of Esther, a lonely, single African-American woman who makes her living sewing beautiful corsets and ladies’ undergarments. There is warm affection between her and the Orthodox Jewish man who sells fabrics to her, but any relationship between them, even a touch, is completely forbidden. Seeking love and romance, Esther eventually embarks on a letter-writing relationship with a mysterious suitor laboring on the Panama Canal. When he moves to New York they embark on an unhappy marriage, leading Esther to realize that only her self-reliance and certainty of her own worth will see her through life’s challenges.