{"id":5712,"date":"2012-01-26T15:59:32","date_gmt":"2012-01-26T22:59:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/?p=5712"},"modified":"2012-01-26T16:05:12","modified_gmt":"2012-01-26T23:05:12","slug":"theatreworks-celebrates-the-black-experience-with-joe-turner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/?p=5712","title":{"rendered":"Theatreworks celebrates the black experience with “Joe Turner”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
From left: Timothy C. Johnson as Bynum Walker, Lynne Hastings as Bertha Holley and Cris Davenport as Seth Holley, enjoy food and friendship at the Holley Boardinghouse table in the Theatreworks production of August Wilson\u2019s \u201cJoe Turner\u2019s Come and Gone.\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

August Wilson\u2019s classic \u201cJoe Turner\u2019s Come and Gone\u201d comes to the Theatreworks stage Jan. 26-Feb. 19, at the Dusty Loo Bon Vivant Theater at UCCS.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis production of ‘Joe Turner’ is a significant artistic event for Colorado and a great recognition of Black History Month at UCCS,\u201d said Kee Warner, associate vice chancellor for diversity and inclusiveness, Academic Affairs.<\/p>\n

Murray Ross, artistic director, Theatreworks, described August Wilson as \u201cprobably the most accomplished playwright of the 20th<\/sup> century.\u201d<\/p>\n

During his lifetime, Wilson created ten plays in a dramatic cycle chronicling the African-American experience of the 20th<\/sup> century. With a play set in each decade, the cycle is \u201cthe most poetic, most ambitious, and most magnificent accomplishment by any American dramatist of the last hundred years,\u201d Ross said. \u201cIt\u2019s really an astonishing achievement.\u201d<\/p>\n

Theatreworks has presented two of the ten plays, he said. \u201cJoe Turner\u2019s Come and Gone\u201d will be the third.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe believe that ‘Joe Turner’ is perhaps the greatest of this ten-play cycle,\u201d said Ross. \u201cIt\u2019s set in a boarding house in Pittsburgh in 1911 at the point where freedom has been established, and now there\u2019s a great migration of African-Americans from the south moving to the north.\u201d<\/p>\n

These people on the move now have within them, for the first time, the opportunities of freedom as well as an enormous sense of dislocation, Ross said. Uprooted from their lives and histories, they enter a new, industrialized world full of opportunity accompanied by frightening challenges.<\/p>\n

At the heart of play is Harold Loomis, who arrives with his young daughter in search of his missing wife. His journey is one of the stories of the transient group of boarding house people who seek new life, freedom and identity in a new America. The play moves forward into a new future while harkening back to a mystic and spiritual past involving the deep roots of the black experience, said Ross.<\/p>\n

Theatreworks assembled a stellar cast for this production, which features actors from both coasts and homegrown Colorado talent. Director Clinton Turner Davis, a prominent theater scholar, is a professor at Colorado College.<\/p>\n

The coffee, biscuits and fried chicken served at the boarding house table are part of Wilson\u2019s attention to mundane detail. But the kind of food, and how and where it is served, presents some insight into social and cultural convention. Wilson used this in his plays as exposition of black culture.\u00a0 Davis will present a lecture about food in Wilson\u2019s writing at 2:30 p.m. Feb. 12 at the theater and food will be served. The lecture, free of charge, is one of the events in the Prologue series sponsored by Theatreworks and the UCCS Department of Visual and Performing Arts.<\/p>\n

Reserved tickets to \u201cJoe Turner\u2019s Come and Gone\u201d are $30 each, $20 each for groups of 10 or more, and $15 for children under 16 years of age. Performances are on Thursday, Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., Sundays at 4 p.m., and Saturday matinees are on Feb. 4, 11, and 18 at 2 p.m.<\/p>\n

For more information, visit http:\/\/www.theatreworkscs.org\/index.htm<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

August Wilson\u2019s classic \u201cJoe Turner\u2019s Come and Gone\u201d comes to the Theatreworks stage Jan. 26-Feb. 19, at the Dusty Loo Bon Vivant Theater at UCCS. \u201cThis production of ‘Joe Turner’ is a significant artistic event (More)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":20437,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1,12,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all","category-events","category-upcoming-events"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Joe-Turner-3-200x300.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1mBpJ-1u8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5712"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5715,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5712\/revisions\/5715"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}