New play reading series takes on urgent social issues, starting with race

Michelle Johnson

Michelle Johnson

The first two readings in a new Westport Center for the Arts series called #VOICES KC focus on issues of race, reflecting on a timely issue on many people’s minds.

The #Voices KC series aims to provide a platform for diverse, local viewpoints about urgent social issues in the community and the world at large. The Westport Center for the Arts hopes to promote discussion, reflection, and a newfound understanding of our diverse community through the power of storytelling.

The first installment, #Voices KC (Vol. 1) on April 8 and 9 features readings of two plays by Kansas City-based, nationally recognized African- American playwrights on the subject of race in America today, The Last Black Play by Nathan Louis Jackson and Trading Races: From Rodney King to Paula Deen by Michelle T. Johnson. The playwrights have each updated their scripts to reflect recent events and cultural changes.

Jackson is the playwright in residence at the Kansas City Rep and Johnson is the playwright behind the recent Justice in the Embers project with Storyworks KC at The Living Room Theatre.

“The two plays in Vol. 1 are excellent companion pieces in that they both delve unhesitatingly into the very core of the urgent and ever-present issues that surround the subject of race in our society. Employing brilliant humor and unflinching observation, both plays are keen reminders that we must hold a steady mirror up to ourselves and our assumptions if we are to collectively understand how we must face the issues challenging us today,” according to Mackenzie Goodwin Tran, Artistic Director of Westport Center for the Arts Theatre.

The Last Black Play by Nathan Louis Jackson centers on the dynamics of a fledgling theatre company and its resident playwright as they struggle to bring in audiences for their plays. The young playwright resists categorization as a ‘black playwright,’ and is pushed to the edge of frustration by the prospect of a failing show and an agent who is halfway out the door. In a stroke of inspiration and rebellion, the playwright decides to push the extremes of his identity as a ‘black playwright,’ to lean into and explode the stereotypes he’s been pushing against. He decides to take a stand to save both his company and his artistic integrity –to definitively undermine the pressure to write so-called ‘black plays,’ he will write “The Last Black Play.”

Trading Races: From Rodney King to Paula Deen by Michelle T. Johnson is an epic clash of archetypes and ideas; it is a satire in which a hypothetical ultimate showdown between ‘The White Race’ and ‘The Black Race’ (joined by several other minority groups) has become the only way to save society from destruction. The contestants, a ‘Black Woman’ (in the incarnation of Eve) and ‘White Man’ (in the incarnation of Bill Clinton) appear as mystic representatives of their entire respective races, and attempt to settle their differences, once and for all. The two square off in a public debate in which all the racial cards are laid out on the table and the (metaphysical) gloves come off. Just when it seems they will never come to an understanding, a mysterious force intervenes in an attempt to make them finally see life is like in the other’s shoes. Will the two ever find peace? Or will they face destruction at the hands of a force that can no longer stand to see them bicker?

 

Details

VOICES (Vol.1)

The Last Black Play
Date: April 8th, 7:30 p.m., at The Buffalo Room at 817 Westport Rd. (in the Westport Flea Market). Doors will open at 6:30 p.m., and food and drink are available in the Buffalo Room. Tickets are $10 at the door or online. Tickets

 Trading Races: From Rodney King to Paula Deen

Date: Saturday, April 9th at 7:30 p.m. at The Buffalo Room, 817 Westport Rd (in the Westport Flea Market). Doors will open at 6:30 p.m., and food and drink are available in The Buffalo Room. Tickets are $10 at the door or online. Tickets

 

 

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