Gloria Dulan-Wilson Blog/ECLECTICALLY BLACK NEWS: UPDATED GDW EVENT ALERT EXTRA: This week end has gotten even more crowded

By Gloria Dulan-Wilson

Hello All:

Just when you thought it was safe to make plans for the coming week end, another event - actually several other events, come up at the last minute, that could totally alter your itinerary - and I would be totally irresponsible to leave them out.

NEW YORK CITY

JUNE 30, 2016

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

JUN30

Interested

Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing - Set in Post-Civil War Louisiana

Thu 7 PMNew York, NY

Details

Take Wing And Soar Productions and Voza Rivers/New Heritage Theatre Group present a concert staged reading of the HARLEM SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL’s new 90 minute abridged version of Shakespeare’s MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, set in Post-Civil War Louisiana amongst the Free Blacks of Color | Abridged and directed by Associate Artistic Director DATHAN B. WILLIAMS

Join us for the closing event of the 2015-2016 festival season:
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
Love goes by haps,
Some cupid kills with arrows,
Some with traps

…
DATE & TIME
O N E N I G H T O N L Y
Thursday, June 30, 2016 7:00pm

VENUE
Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building
163 West 125th Street, 3rd Floor Executive Suite
New York, NY 10027 (at corner of 125th Street & Adam Clayton Powell Blvd)

TICKETS
L I M I T E D S E A T I N G // RSVP Required
$10 Sugessted Donation to Reserve Your Seat in Advance or Pay what you will Online at Eventbrite.com
For More Information, call 212-926-2550

HARLEM SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL
Debra Ann Byrd -- Founder & Producing Artistic Director
Voza Rivers -- Executive Producer
Dathan B. Williams -- Associate Artistic Director
LaZette McCants -- Director of Volunteer Services
Tom Martin – Festival Liaison
- - - -
MORE ABOUT THIS PRODUCTION:
This production of Much Ado About Nothing will be set in post, Civil War New Orleans around the period of what was called “The In-Gathering” when freed slaves went searching for their family members sold in slavery.

The Corps d’Afrique (a real New Orleans battalion which was formed after the city was taken and occupied by Union forces. It was made up of property-owning free people of color. The US Colored Troops (USCT) was formed in 1863. Among them were the men who formed the Corps D’Afrique) returns from war - having fought in the famous Ft. Wagner battle (the movie Glory) and the equally important but less famous battles at Fort Pillow, Battle of the Crater, Battle of New Market Heights and Honey Springs.

The period we are setting the show in is a time when men coming home from battle was a thing to celebrate, and a time when some of the attitudes in the play are a bit more understandable.

Don Jon will represent a defeated mixed-blood, “paper bag theory”, 1/10 colored man of the South, who passes as a gay white man and fought for the south on the principle of land ownership as he fumes and plots his revenge against his brother, Don Pedro, the Unionist Governor of Louisiana.

This showcase will feature period music and dance; this is a fully cast stage reading production (with a little doubling.)

And instead of the fashionably helpless Southern Belle of the 1860's, we will meet a stronger and more resilient breed of woman, Beatrice, the "belle" with a mind of her own and a sharp tongue to go with it.