Friday, June 25, 2010

Philly Bloggers Love BLACK PEARL SINGS!

Several local writers have blogged about how much they enjoyed BLACK PEARL SINGS! Take a look at a few of their comments:

"I read this play ... and am thrilled to have had the opportunity to see this spare and powerful piece expertly cast, deftly dressed (set and actors), simply lit, elegantly directed, and superbly acted. InterAct Theatre Company is doing something special ... Do yourself a favor and catch this special production ... A powerful and evocative story ..."
- Martha Wade Steketee, Urban Excavations Blog


"... C. Kelly Wright (Pearl) and Catharine Slusar (Susannah) are marvelous. ... The entire production, the scenery, costumes and lighting, is wonderfully crafted. There are more laughs than you might expect from the storyline. A capella songs underscore the heart and tensions of the plot. They're so affecting you may find yourself inclined to sing along."
- Deni Kasrel, UWishUNu Blog


"With their current production, Black Pearl Sings!, InterAct Theatre brings a powerful story to the Mainstage of Philadelphia’s Adrienne. The intimate performance space, where third row is a mere six feet from the floor-level stage, helps one feel immersed in the story ... the greatest beauty of this show lay in the voice of C. Kelly Wright as she sang a cappella spirituals and folk songs, and her visceral expression of emotions throughout the performance. Her rich voice brought tears to my eyes multiple times, and manifested great power and strength. I felt her voice not only in my ears but in my bones. ... [an] excellent production ..."
- Lisa Rand, Feminist Review Blog


"Do NOT miss this play at the InterAct Theatre ... The ancestors live, breathe and intoxicate through Ms. Wright in Black Pearl Sings!, and you owe it to yourself, ... to see what she can bring forth in you as you sit helpless in the audience."
- Dr. Niama L. Williams, BlowingUpBarriers.com


Links to more information about BLACK PEARL SINGS!:

Purchase Tickets Now

Read Wendy Rosenfield's Philadelphia Inquirer Review

Read Kimberly Roberts' Philadelphia Tribune Review

Read J. Cooper Robb's Philadelphia Weekly Review

Read Bonnie Squires' Mainline Times Review

Read Naila Francis' Intelligencer Article

Listen to Music Featured in BLACK PEARL SINGS!

Play Description, Artist Bios & Performance Calendar

An Interview with Playwright Frank Higgins

Watch a video trailer of BLACK PEARL SINGS! at Ford's Theatre in Washington D.C.





Thursday, June 24, 2010

Mainline Times: BLACK PEARL SINGS! is "A Magnificent Play"



BLACK PEARL SINGS really strikes a chord in Bonnie Squires at Mainline Times.  Check out these excerpts to see why she loved the show:

Village View: A play, a book and the reality of our race relations

By Bonnie Squires
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Ever since my husband and I went to see “Black Pearl Sings!” at the InterAct Theater, we can’t stop thinking about the play and its many levels of meaning. The Frank Higgins play is a springboard for resuming something really important which has been submerged in the outcry against British Petroleum Oil and the disaster occurring in the Gulf of Mexico: the national conversation on race relations. Which almost had its jump-start with the election of our first African-American president.

But the recession, Afghanistan and now BP all intervened and interrupted what should have been an ongoing discussion of race relations in America. And inequality in its many forms. And what has — and has not — been done to ameliorate the racism and prejudice which shows its ugly head at every opportunity.

“Black Pearl Sings!” puts everything into focus. The action takes place in 1935 but it could easily have taken place today.

... Frank Higgins, who is white, has created a magnificent play which is guaranteed to make every theatergoer, black or white, uncomfortable. And rightfully so.

... And Seth Rozin, the director and co-founder of InterAct Theater Company, has a special knack for bringing out compassion and empathy, even in characters who are not the most appealing to begin with.

... the compelling, cynical character of Pearl (C. Kelly Wright), with her amazing voice and repertoire of songs to comfort her as she drags her ball and chain into the visitors’ room of the jail, is designed to move us.

... You really need to see “Black Pearl Sings,” which is here through Sunday. And then sit down with “The Other Wes Moore” and think on race relations in America today.

Links to more information about BLACK PEARL SINGS!:

Read Bonnie Squires' Full Mainline Times Review

Purchase Tickets Now

Read J. Cooper Robb's Philadelphia Weekly Review

Read Kimberly Roberts' Philadelphia Tribune Review

Read Wendy Rosenfield's Philadelphia Inquirer Review

Listen to Music Featured in BLACK PEARL SINGS!

Play Description, Artist Bios & Performance Calendar

An Interview with Playwright Frank Higgins

Watch a video trailer of BLACK PEARL SINGS! at Ford's Theatre in Washington D.C.





Philly Weekly: BLACK PEARL SINGS! is "Compelling" & "High Caliber"


J. Cooper Robb raves about BLACK PEARL SINGS! in this week's Philadelphia Weekly! Check out these excerpts:

Black Pearl Sings

By J. Cooper Robb
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Ownership of culture is at the heart of Frank Higgins’ Black Pearl Sings, a compelling drama in a thoughtful production from InterAct Theater Company. Higgins’ play, inspired by the real-life association between musicologist John Lomax and singer/guitarist Leadbelly, focuses on the relationship between two disparate women in Depression-era America.

... Susannah is likeable but naive, at one point announcing that she is an “expert in oppressed people.” While she’s clearly not a bigot, questions of whether she’s particularly qualified to be a curator of African-American culture lie close to the heart of the play.

... Wright has considerable musical-theater experience belied by the singing style she uses in her performance as Pearl. Sounding like a woman who needs to sing rather than a woman trained to sing, Wright’s vocals are soulful, painful, joyful and spiritual.

... The costuming choices, sound design and high caliber of acting are reflective of the care given to all elements of Rozin’s meticulously mounted production. In a play that could be one-sided (the role of Pearl clearly being the meatier and flashier of the two leads) this is an evenhanded affair that leaves us questioning whether an outsider can ever “present” another culture accurately and with empathy.


Links to more information about BLACK PEARL SINGS!:

Read J. Cooper Robb's Full Philadelphia Weekly Review

Purchase Tickets Now

Read Kimberly Roberts' Philadelphia Tribune Review

Read Wendy Rosenfield's Philadelphia Inquirer Review

Listen to Music Featured in BLACK PEARL SINGS!

Play Description, Artist Bios & Performance Calendar

An Interview with Playwright Frank Higgins

Watch a video trailer of BLACK PEARL SINGS! at Ford's Theatre in Washington D.C.





Wednesday, June 9, 2010

BLACK PEARL SINGS Actresses Interviewed in The Intelligencer



Naila Franics has written a great article about BLACK PEARL SINGS for The Intelligencer, including interviews with both actresses in the show. Take a look...

Songs For The Journey

By Naila Franicis
The Intelligencer
Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Ultimately, it’s often reflected upon as a story of unlikely friendship.

But “Black Pearl Sings!,” Frank Higgins’ critically acclaimed drama about two women confronted by race and gender biases during the Great Depression, packs a much more compelling complexity. ...

“What’s easy to do with the play is to make it about people connecting and I think the story has more to do with them not connecting,” says Catharine K. Slusar, the Philadelphia-based actress who plays Susannah. “By the end of the play, they respect each other deeply in a way that wasn’t possible in the beginning. In the beginning, Susannah just needs to make the next big discovery so she can get a teaching job at Harvard and Pearl just needs to get out so she can see her daughter.

“You think these two women are never going to see eye to eye. They are so stubborn and single-minded, but the interesting thing is it comes when you don’t expect it. … I don’t know that they’re friends but they love each other, which is more than that in a way.”

For both Slusar, also director of the theater department at Bryn Mawr College, and C. Kelly Wright, who is making her Philadelphia debut in the role of Pearl, the play is a powerful meditation on survival, the preservation of cultural heritage — and the slippery slope to define what’s authentic and what isn’t — and the similarities that bind us, often more deeply than any initial differences and misperceptions may suggest.

“It’s about the common ground among human beings and women and really just coming to a point where I can appreciate that (Susannah) is not so different from me,” says Wright, who recently relocated to New York after years in the San Francisco Bay Area. “Susannah’s not alone in having her misconceptions. Pearl has a boatload of them herself based on her experience. She has to form a new world order, I think, and she gets that from Susannah. The ways in which they’re different — the things the other person possesses — many of these are things that they could use.”

While Pearl definitely believes herself to bear a greater burden of injustice and degradation based on her race, Higgins handily juxtaposes her oppression with that of Susannah’s own gender struggles.

“It’s easy to see what Pearl is fighting against because of the history of slavery in our country and segregation, etc., and she’s in prison. You think that white people had all the power, but I think what Frank does that’s interesting is he makes the struggle of women deeply important,” says Slusar, a Barrymore Award-winning actress who has appeared in several InterAct Theatre productions ...

Still, Pearl and Susannah forge a delicate trust as they begin to dismantle their preconceived notions about each other. That bond is further enriched by the 20 or so songs that they share in the play. Though most of them are in the public domain and several may sound familiar, even the most well-known ones — “Kum Ba Yah” and “This Little Light of Mine,” for instance — are rendered in live, little-heard a cappella versions.

“Most of the songs, the way they’re placed in the piece, they have a dual meaning,” says Wright, whose recent credits include the off-Broadway production of “Langston In Harlem” and Playwrights Horizons’ “Red Clay,” in which she portrayed Rosa Parks. “Many of them start off as one experience and end up as another. They serve to place the piece time-wise and to ground it in the earthiness that it’s coming from. [‘Black Pearl Sings!’] is about the songs, but it’s also about the life that these songs sing about.”
The songs also underscore the importance of preserving the past. Slusar says that her character doesn’t want the past to get lost within all the tumult and change of the Great Depression; in reaching back to protect what she believes is important, she also hopes to prove the power of song as both a survival and communication skill.

For Wright, the play is preserving something that strikes a little closer to home.

“There are actors who don’t want to portray certain periods of time — they don’t want to do another slave show or Civil War show — but I feel very protective of those voices because they didn’t get their opportunity to speak,” says Wright. “Sometimes in the retelling of their stories, they’re not fully thought through, but Frank has written Pearl to be strong and knowledgeable. She’s not a caricature. She has hopes and dreams and fears and prayers, very much like me. I find a full place to start with her and that feels good.”

Links to more information about BLACK PEARL SINGS!:

Read Naila Francis' Full Intelligencer Article

Purchase Tickets

Read Wendy Rosenfield's Philadelphia Inquirer Review

Read Kimberly Roberts' Philadelphia Tribune Review

Listen to Music Featured in BLACK PEARL SINGS!

Play Description, Artist Bios & Performance Calendar

An Interview with Playwright Frank Higgins

Watch a video trailer of BLACK PEARL SINGS!
at Ford's Theatre in Washington D.C.






Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Tribune: BLACK PEARL SINGS is "Lively" & "Profound"


BLACK PEARL SINGS received an excellent review from Kimberly Roberts at The Philadelphia Tribune! Check out some of what she had to say:

‘Black Pearl Sings!’ is a lively character study

By Kimberly Roberts
Tribune Entertainment Writer
Friday, June 4, 2010

Interact Theatre Company, known for its small but profound productions, has done it again with “Black Pearl Sings!” ...

Both Wright and Slusar have a gift for comedy, and Higgins’ earthy, dialogue driven piece is filled with zany one-line zingers, delivered with plenty of attitude by both characters, along with some inconvenient truths that are often painful to hear.

The cozy intimate atmosphere of The Adrienne is conducive to the interactive nature of “Black Pearl Sings!" In her InterAct Theatre debut, Wright, who should be a strong contender for a Barrymore Award after this performance, fully engaged the audience with her expressive facial features, inner angst and compelling delivery of the traditional hymns and spirituals.

Barrymore winner Catharine Slusar, ... consistently shines a bright light on Pearl’s “authentic” heritage, while refusing to address, or even acknowledge, the problems in her own ... the two women form a sisterhood, though not quite a friendship, that was engrossing.

Based on the age-old story of exploitation (for the sake of art, of course), “Black Pearl Sings!” is a provocative production that demonstrates, once again, how deeply stereotypes, racism, and prejudice are woven into the fabric of America. ...

Links to more information about BLACK PEARL SINGS!:

Read Kimberly Roberts' Full Review

Purchase Tickets

Read Wendy Rosenfield's Philadelphia Inquirer Review

Listen to Music Featured in
BLACK PEARL SINGS!


Play Description, Artist Bios & Performance Calendar

An Interview with Playwright Frank Higgins

Watch a video trailer of BLACK
PEARL SINGS! at Ford's Theatre
in Washington D.C.






Friday, June 4, 2010

Inquirer: BLACK PEARL SINGS is "The Real Deal"


Check out these excerpts from Wendy Rosenfield's review of BLACK PEARL SINGS! in today's Inquirer:

Black, White Women Bond Musically and Winningly

By Wendy Rosenfield
Friday, June 4, 2010

... In Seth Rozin's hands, Black Pearl sings, all right, and women wasting their girls-night-out money on faux female-bonding shows like Respect or Menopause: The Musical ought to demand refunds, link arms, and head straight to the Adrienne Theatre for the real deal, courtesy of InterAct Theatre Company.

There's music here too, both spiritual and playful, albeit from the Depression era and earlier. Higgins' drama is modeled after the relationship between bluesman Leadbelly and musicologist John Lomax, but the women make it their own, with tunes devastatingly bellowed by C. Kelly Wright as Pearl Johnson, and sung with a self-conscious reserve by Catherine Slusar as Susannah Mullally.

Rozin carefully calibrates the women's intellectual and emotional balance. He allows them dignity, silliness, and secrets in equal measure without forcing them to wallow too deeply for too long in the type of unbridled pathos and sentimentality that could drown this play.

... Wright and Slusar are strong enough to resist the script's baser instincts. The play's success lies in its characters' friendship, not their surroundings - though Shannon Zura's set ... allows the women to stretch out and explore the space between them. ...

There may be some irony in the fact that this endearing examination of women and race was written and directed by a pair of white men, but then again maybe that's just Higgins' point. Just as Susannah's search for "authenticity" led her to expand the definition, this production asks its audience to do the same.

Links to more information about BLACK PEARL SINGS!:

Read Wendy Rosenfield's Full Review

Purchase Tickets

Listen to Music Featured in
BLACK PEARL SINGS!


Play Description, Artist Bios & Performance Calendar

An Interview with Playwright Frank Higgins

Watch a video trailer of BLACK
PEARL SINGS! at Ford's Theatre
in Washington D.C.