Places, Everyone

At a live interview event at JCC Harlem on October 24, 2022, I spoke with two artists who were integral to the Broadway production of A Strange Loop, the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical by Michael R. Jackson. These artists – Associate Director Nemuna Ceesay and original cast member Jason Veasey – spoke about the show’s development and themes . This episode includes highlights from the live event. For more information on A Strange Loop, visit strangeloopmusical.com, and follow Nemuna and Jason on Instagram at @_nemuna_ and @veaseyville.

In April, I had the pleasure of leading an evening event about August Wilson, specifically his play, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. This event was hosted by the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Maryland, where the program I co-direct, Exploring Black Narratives, first took off. This conversation includes background on Wilson’s life and the Great Migration in America, as well as a comparative discussion on the script of Ma Rainey and the Netflix film adaptation.

This episode is one of two classroom interviews with 11th grade students at Shalhevet high school in Los Angeles, CA. As part of the Exploring Black Narratives program, we studied Dominique Morisseau's play "Pipeline" and interviewed actors who starred in productions around the US. Today's interview is with Andrea Harris Smith who played Nya at the Studio Theatre production of "Pipeline" in Washington, D.C.Pipeline centers on a public high school teacher named Nya whose own teenage son, Omari, attends a private boarding school. Nya’s ex-husband Xavier, Omari’s dad, believes that the private school will give Omari the best education though it’s a distance from his home and Omari would be one of the only Black students in his classes. At the start of the play, Nya calls Xavier with the news that Omari has gotten into an altercation with his teacher. The teacher had pressured him to talk about Richard Wright’s novel Native Son as though Omari were the representative to speak about Black characters. Feeling increasingly cornered by the teacher, Omari physically pushed back and winds up suspended and at risk of being arrested. Nya worries that the school administrators will see Omari’s appearance and respond harshly, channeling him into the school-to-prison pipeline. While Nya is confident in her role as a teacher, she feels inadequate as a parent trying to protect her son.If you'd like to learn more about Exploring Black Narratives, here is an article about the program that I wrote for American Theatre magazine: https://www.americantheatre.org/2021/03/19/the-familiar-and-the-new-teaching-black-plays-in-jewish-high-schools/