Wednesday, October 22, 2008
American Idol Finalist Anwar Robinson to Sing Live
American Idol Finalist Anwar Robinson will sing live for the media in a rare, intimate performance at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, October 22 in the Sutton Pavilion at Syracuse Stage, 820 East Genesee Street. The performance will begin with brief introductory comments by Director Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj, the Associate Artistic Director at Syracuse Stage.
Robinson recently arrived in Syracuse to start rehearsing for the Syracuse Stage production of Godspell, for which he will play the role of Jesus.
Often compared to his musical idol Stevie Wonder, Robinson has recorded and performed with Clive Davis, Patti LaBelle, Kelly Price and Donnie McClurkin. With the 2005 top ten American Idol finalists, Robinson performed for over 500,000 people in 40 different cities, and in 2007 Robinson played the role of Collins in the National Tour of Rent.
Photo, Video and Interview opportunities with Anwar Robinson, Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj and the cast of Godspell will be available.
Godspell will run November 25-December 28 at Syracuse Stage. Tickets range $24-$48, available at www.SyracuseStage.org.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Tales from the Salt City - Bridges to Community
In Invitation to the Party - Building Bridges to the Arts, Culture and Community Donna Walker-Kuhne writes about writer and director George C. Wolfe's vision for the Public Theatre, one of the leading cultural centers in the country. She states, in her opening chapter that he wanted "to create a theatre that looks and feels like a subway stop in New York City."
At the World Premiere of Syracuse Stage's Tales from the Salt City, a patron observed and provided an unsolicited remark about all of the different types of people in the audience. As I looked around, I was reminded of that quote and I smiled to myself.
Tim Bond, Producing Artistic Director of Syracuse Stage, enthusiastically introduced the performance. He commented on his desire to get to know the Syracuse community. His approach was to bring in esteemed theatre artist Ping Chong, his friend and mentor of 15 years, to uncover stories of people that live and work in the Syracuse community. A video interview with Ping Chong can be viewed here.
Tales from the Salt City is a beautiful, poignant, riveting theatrical experience. It is also a commentary on the silence of race in our community. What makes it so compelling is that every story is true. What a gift!
As Community Engagement Manager for Syracuse Stage, I cordially invite you to meet and see your neighbors in this moving production.
-Carol Charles, Community Engagement Manager, Syracuse Stage
At the World Premiere of Syracuse Stage's Tales from the Salt City, a patron observed and provided an unsolicited remark about all of the different types of people in the audience. As I looked around, I was reminded of that quote and I smiled to myself.
Tim Bond, Producing Artistic Director of Syracuse Stage, enthusiastically introduced the performance. He commented on his desire to get to know the Syracuse community. His approach was to bring in esteemed theatre artist Ping Chong, his friend and mentor of 15 years, to uncover stories of people that live and work in the Syracuse community. A video interview with Ping Chong can be viewed here.
Tales from the Salt City is a beautiful, poignant, riveting theatrical experience. It is also a commentary on the silence of race in our community. What makes it so compelling is that every story is true. What a gift!
As Community Engagement Manager for Syracuse Stage, I cordially invite you to meet and see your neighbors in this moving production.
-Carol Charles, Community Engagement Manager, Syracuse Stage
Gordana Dudevski in Tales from the Salt City. Photo: Michael Davis.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Keyhole Conversations
On Sunday, Sept. 21 after the 7 p.m. performance Syracuse Stage mounted Stage Talk a new discussion series focusing on themes that emerge from each show. The topic of this particular StageTalk was "The N Word, Then and Now." Moderator, George Kilpatrick, a friend and local media celebrity called it a "rare" opportunity to get black people in mixed company to broach the subject.
It was indeed.
An audience member likened this conversation and the play, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, to looking through a key-hole. Through that key-hole she was offered a view of black life, in the vernacular.
It was indeed.
An audience member likened this conversation and the play, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, to looking through a key-hole. Through that key-hole she was offered a view of black life, in the vernacular.
-Carol Charles, Community Engagement Manager, Syracuse Stage
Warner Miller, Thomas Jefferson Byrd, Doug Eskew in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. Photo: T. Charles Erickson
Friday, October 3, 2008
Q&A With Ebony Jo-Ann
The following conversation took place between Timothy Bond and actress Ebony Jo-Ann, September 20, 2008 at the Community Folk Art Center.
Timothy Bond: My name is Tim Bond and I’m the Producing Artistic Director here at Syracuse Stage, Director of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and I want to introduce you all to Ms. Ebony Jo-Ann.
She is a six time Vivian Robinson AUDELCO award-winner. She has a long history with Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom having been involved as an understudy in the original production in 1984. She went on to understudy Whoopi Goldberg in the 2003 revival in the play on Broadway and then was given the honor of playing Ma Rainey in the Kennedy Center’s retrospective of August Wilson’s 10-play cycle of the African American Experience.
Can you tell us about your relationship with August Wilson?
Ebony Jo-Ann: Interestingly enough, I’ve heard you talk about your experience with August and how the two of you talked a lot about the plays…he would introduce the play to you two years before they were produced anywhere, before they were even completed. I thought about that and I was a little jealous because August and I never talked about plays. I don’t know why, in our friendship of almost 25 years…I guess it was because he was a fledgeling playwright when I met him. I met him along with Lloyd Richards through the Yale experience and we just talked about family and life and just really never talked about the plays at all.
I auditioned for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom for the Yale production. And I’ll never forget, they laughed and joked all the way through my audition and I sang and it was all over. And they grabbed me and held onto me through all the years, for the O’Neill Playwrights Conferences and for Broadway. I don’t know what I represented to them. But I think it had a lot to do with the fact that I was probably the strongest black woman they’d ever run across.
Timothy Bond: What connection do you have with the family of Martin Luther King Jr.?
I was good friends with Yolanda, his daughter. I met her when she was a student at NYU and I was thrilled. We just took to each other and through the years we formed a really, really close friendship. We would meet as often as we possibly could at the North Carolina Black Theatre Festival. We’d sit there and dish and critique and ask, “What are you going to go see tonight?” It was a wonderful festival and there were just too many plays for you to see; you’d have to look at the calendar and decide what you were going to see and we would get together and decide. She was a wonderful, wonderful actress and a wonderful, wonderful friend. I wish I’d known Martin Luther King Jr. I adored that man. I didn’t believe in his principles. I’m not a non-violent person. [Audience laughed]
As a matter of fact, during the Civil Rights Movement when all of the kids were leaving the North and going to the South to march, I asked my parents why I couldn’t go and they said, “We want you to come back alive so no, you can’t go. You’re going to school.” They knew if somebody hit me, the movement was all over. So I was good friend with Yoki and I adored her mother, Coretta. I adored her. I met her in Atlanta of course.
Yolanda used to tell me about her Mom all the time. And when I finally met her she said, “You better be careful, you’ve got to watch her. You’ll meet her and you’ll just be so happy to meet her and the next thing you know, she’ll put you to work. Be careful.”
Coretta was just so charming and just so wonderful, and sure enough before you knew it she gave you a job. You were busy doing it and happy to be doing it.
TB: That’s why they called her ‘The Mover’. Now you know Ebony is quite a musical artist as well as an actress, and has a band called the Blackgold Ensemble, which was recently at the Harlem Lenox Lounge. You’ve performed your musical residency at the legendary Sweetwaters Cabaret in New York City. You’ve been the musical director/vocal arranger for James de Jongh’s Do Lord Remember Me at American Place Theatre, The Black Theatre Festival, in St. Thomas and St. Croix. Can you tell us about your music?
EJA: Music is the other half of me. Or maybe its three quarters, oh I don’t know I love music. What I’ve decided to do with the rest of my life is just perform the music that I love around the world. It gives me peace. It gives me a chance to travel.
I have a wonderful musical director now, Richard Cummings. We perform spoken word as well as jazz and blues…a lot of the original music. That’s probably based on the fact that there’s so much garbage out there now, and the children don’t learn anything about good music. I love anybody or any organization or anything that talks about our African heritage. That’s where I’m coming from, that’s who I am. And I like encompassing everything that created me—that made me who I am today. So I sing about African Paradise and I sing about the blues, I sing “da blues”, there are so many different kinds of blues. Most people don’t know that.
TB: Tell us a little bit about Ma Rainey and who she was and what you are bringing to her.
EJA: Ma was extremely popular but she didn’t sing, “Woe is me that man beat me up”- kind of blues. She used the blues as a political statement, as a social statement. She used blues because it was an expression of what I call “slavocracy”. She used the blues to express the injustices of the past. She used the blues, the blues didn’t use her. And that’s what I loved about her more than anything. I have also had the blessing of being in a production where I portrayed the life of Bessie Smith. Those are two of the strongest women that I am just so aware of; I’m not afraid of their spirit. I ask those spirits to come inside me and take over my being so that I can portray their lives and struggle, music, honesty and truth, I figure that’s the best way to teach.
TB: You’ve also been in a number of films?
EJA: You know, Noise is the film I’ve done recently that I’m most proud of. I had a wonderful scene with Tim Robbins, whom I respect. Love that actor. When I walked in, they told me I was [to play] the clerk at the City Clerk’s Office. I go and I see this really tall man and I think, “He looks familiar…”, and it’s Tim Robbins. He was the loveliest man, and the silliest man. That was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had.
One of my best film experiences in life was with Whoopi Goldberg in Eddie, and that began our friendship. She was just the warmest and the most giving person I’ve ever met in my life on a film set. She would actually teach while we were there and tell me different things that other actors don’t tell you. Like, how to land in the same spot all the time and it was just so wonderful. I read in the trades that they were going to be bringing Ma Rainey back to Broadway in 2003. I contacted her myself and she was so happy. And of course, we had the best time. I’ve shared that experience with Thomas Jefferson Byrd, who was Tony-nominated for the same role he’s reprising in Syracuse…we had a great time.
TB: Lastly, can you give us some final words on what it means to be a performer?
EJA: When I was in high school we were going on a Goodwill tour to Europe, and I was in the a cappella choir, the orchestra, and the jazz octet. The only thing I was not able to express was acting. There just weren’t enough hours in the day and I told one of my music teachers that I wanted to be an actress and they really got on my nerves, because they told me you have to do one thing or another.
I’m doing what I believe God put me on earth to do. I’ve been so blessed because I get the opportunities to do plays with music, and people write things expressly for me, so I’m blessed. [Sings] “I’m blessed, I’m blessed, I’m blessed, I’m blessed, I’m blessed.”
Timothy Bond: My name is Tim Bond and I’m the Producing Artistic Director here at Syracuse Stage, Director of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and I want to introduce you all to Ms. Ebony Jo-Ann.
She is a six time Vivian Robinson AUDELCO award-winner. She has a long history with Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom having been involved as an understudy in the original production in 1984. She went on to understudy Whoopi Goldberg in the 2003 revival in the play on Broadway and then was given the honor of playing Ma Rainey in the Kennedy Center’s retrospective of August Wilson’s 10-play cycle of the African American Experience.
Can you tell us about your relationship with August Wilson?
Ebony Jo-Ann: Interestingly enough, I’ve heard you talk about your experience with August and how the two of you talked a lot about the plays…he would introduce the play to you two years before they were produced anywhere, before they were even completed. I thought about that and I was a little jealous because August and I never talked about plays. I don’t know why, in our friendship of almost 25 years…I guess it was because he was a fledgeling playwright when I met him. I met him along with Lloyd Richards through the Yale experience and we just talked about family and life and just really never talked about the plays at all.
I auditioned for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom for the Yale production. And I’ll never forget, they laughed and joked all the way through my audition and I sang and it was all over. And they grabbed me and held onto me through all the years, for the O’Neill Playwrights Conferences and for Broadway. I don’t know what I represented to them. But I think it had a lot to do with the fact that I was probably the strongest black woman they’d ever run across.
Timothy Bond: What connection do you have with the family of Martin Luther King Jr.?
I was good friends with Yolanda, his daughter. I met her when she was a student at NYU and I was thrilled. We just took to each other and through the years we formed a really, really close friendship. We would meet as often as we possibly could at the North Carolina Black Theatre Festival. We’d sit there and dish and critique and ask, “What are you going to go see tonight?” It was a wonderful festival and there were just too many plays for you to see; you’d have to look at the calendar and decide what you were going to see and we would get together and decide. She was a wonderful, wonderful actress and a wonderful, wonderful friend. I wish I’d known Martin Luther King Jr. I adored that man. I didn’t believe in his principles. I’m not a non-violent person. [Audience laughed]
As a matter of fact, during the Civil Rights Movement when all of the kids were leaving the North and going to the South to march, I asked my parents why I couldn’t go and they said, “We want you to come back alive so no, you can’t go. You’re going to school.” They knew if somebody hit me, the movement was all over. So I was good friend with Yoki and I adored her mother, Coretta. I adored her. I met her in Atlanta of course.
Yolanda used to tell me about her Mom all the time. And when I finally met her she said, “You better be careful, you’ve got to watch her. You’ll meet her and you’ll just be so happy to meet her and the next thing you know, she’ll put you to work. Be careful.”
Coretta was just so charming and just so wonderful, and sure enough before you knew it she gave you a job. You were busy doing it and happy to be doing it.
TB: That’s why they called her ‘The Mover’. Now you know Ebony is quite a musical artist as well as an actress, and has a band called the Blackgold Ensemble, which was recently at the Harlem Lenox Lounge. You’ve performed your musical residency at the legendary Sweetwaters Cabaret in New York City. You’ve been the musical director/vocal arranger for James de Jongh’s Do Lord Remember Me at American Place Theatre, The Black Theatre Festival, in St. Thomas and St. Croix. Can you tell us about your music?
EJA: Music is the other half of me. Or maybe its three quarters, oh I don’t know I love music. What I’ve decided to do with the rest of my life is just perform the music that I love around the world. It gives me peace. It gives me a chance to travel.
I have a wonderful musical director now, Richard Cummings. We perform spoken word as well as jazz and blues…a lot of the original music. That’s probably based on the fact that there’s so much garbage out there now, and the children don’t learn anything about good music. I love anybody or any organization or anything that talks about our African heritage. That’s where I’m coming from, that’s who I am. And I like encompassing everything that created me—that made me who I am today. So I sing about African Paradise and I sing about the blues, I sing “da blues”, there are so many different kinds of blues. Most people don’t know that.
TB: Tell us a little bit about Ma Rainey and who she was and what you are bringing to her.
EJA: Ma was extremely popular but she didn’t sing, “Woe is me that man beat me up”- kind of blues. She used the blues as a political statement, as a social statement. She used blues because it was an expression of what I call “slavocracy”. She used the blues to express the injustices of the past. She used the blues, the blues didn’t use her. And that’s what I loved about her more than anything. I have also had the blessing of being in a production where I portrayed the life of Bessie Smith. Those are two of the strongest women that I am just so aware of; I’m not afraid of their spirit. I ask those spirits to come inside me and take over my being so that I can portray their lives and struggle, music, honesty and truth, I figure that’s the best way to teach.
TB: You’ve also been in a number of films?
EJA: You know, Noise is the film I’ve done recently that I’m most proud of. I had a wonderful scene with Tim Robbins, whom I respect. Love that actor. When I walked in, they told me I was [to play] the clerk at the City Clerk’s Office. I go and I see this really tall man and I think, “He looks familiar…”, and it’s Tim Robbins. He was the loveliest man, and the silliest man. That was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had.
One of my best film experiences in life was with Whoopi Goldberg in Eddie, and that began our friendship. She was just the warmest and the most giving person I’ve ever met in my life on a film set. She would actually teach while we were there and tell me different things that other actors don’t tell you. Like, how to land in the same spot all the time and it was just so wonderful. I read in the trades that they were going to be bringing Ma Rainey back to Broadway in 2003. I contacted her myself and she was so happy. And of course, we had the best time. I’ve shared that experience with Thomas Jefferson Byrd, who was Tony-nominated for the same role he’s reprising in Syracuse…we had a great time.
TB: Lastly, can you give us some final words on what it means to be a performer?
EJA: When I was in high school we were going on a Goodwill tour to Europe, and I was in the a cappella choir, the orchestra, and the jazz octet. The only thing I was not able to express was acting. There just weren’t enough hours in the day and I told one of my music teachers that I wanted to be an actress and they really got on my nerves, because they told me you have to do one thing or another.
I’m doing what I believe God put me on earth to do. I’ve been so blessed because I get the opportunities to do plays with music, and people write things expressly for me, so I’m blessed. [Sings] “I’m blessed, I’m blessed, I’m blessed, I’m blessed, I’m blessed.”
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Transformations
My Loctician’s Salon is called Rashida’s Transformations. I channel Flip Wilson every time I’m there, because I declare it’s the “booth in the back in the corner in the dark.” On a sunny day last May my processed hair met a sudden death on RT’s cutting room floor. Only the new growth remained. I emerged transformed.
The theatre is a place that always carries that expectation. “When the curtain goes up – I expect to be transformed,” said Kyle Bass, Syracuse Stage's Literary Manager, in a recent conversation about the allure of the American Theater.
Syracuse Stage's first play of the 2008-2009 season, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, will not disappoint in this regard. The first of August Wilson’s cycle of ten plays captures a period, a place and a persona of legend. The vivid text and performances will pierce your imagination.
It’s still not too late to catch the show. Step into the theater, Syracuse Stage, and expect to be transformed.
-Carol Charles, Community Engagement Manager, Syracuse Stage
The theatre is a place that always carries that expectation. “When the curtain goes up – I expect to be transformed,” said Kyle Bass, Syracuse Stage's Literary Manager, in a recent conversation about the allure of the American Theater.
Syracuse Stage's first play of the 2008-2009 season, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, will not disappoint in this regard. The first of August Wilson’s cycle of ten plays captures a period, a place and a persona of legend. The vivid text and performances will pierce your imagination.
It’s still not too late to catch the show. Step into the theater, Syracuse Stage, and expect to be transformed.
-Carol Charles, Community Engagement Manager, Syracuse Stage
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