A Raisin In The Sun

Last night I took my spiritual god mama out to the screening/ panel discussion of the upcoming made for TV movie version of A Raisin In The Sun at the new Times Center building. With Phylicia Rashad, Diddy, Audra McDonald and Kenny Leon all on the panel it was, of course, a sold out affair. The movie itself is quite good. I really, really liked being able to see and to get a wonderful sense for what it was like living on the south side of Chicago in the 1950's from a Black perspective. The backdrop of the landscape and the people and seeing Mama Lena and Walter Lee's work environments just gave the play that much more body and soul.

Not to give anything away but the ending is slightly different from the book and the play, which gives the overall theme of this historic play a slightly new twist or nuance if you will. Just as I was about to ask Kenny and company about this change the dang host announced the event was over and the lights came up and my mic was silenced. Let me tell you they run this Times Center stage like a unioned Broadway production—started right on time and ended exactly when they said they would. Sucks for me though! This is like the third time this has happened to me recently. I've got a really strong question and I don't get to ask it because the Ashlee Simpson looking chick in front of me is talking about how she is a revolutionary for change and voting, yada, yada, yada. Ugh! And the chick in front of her in her red satin spaghetti strapped cocktail dress gushed about her new book of poetry and how she dedicated it to Ms. Rashad blah, blah, blah. That kind of crap should have happened after the show in the waiting wings by the exit door. Oh well. It is what it is. I'll get my Q&A moment eventually!

I'm a fan and wannabe student of theatre. I go every year and sometimes two and three times a year depending on what's out and how phat my pockets may be. I'm looking forward to Cat On a Hot Tin Roof. What about you? How many of you go to see theater and do you think adding pop celebs like Diddy, Fantasia and now Terrence Howard (in Cat) to the cast make a production more popular and therefore more successful? Check the trailer for Raisin below and check it out when it hits your boob tube on February 25th at 8pm on ABC.

Raisin>
In The Sun

theHottentot-ness Grrrl

This past Monday I was invited to a benefit reading of Venus a new work by Suzan-Lori Parks (Top Dog Underdog; Getting Mother's Body). Having done a ton of research on Hottentot Venus, the artist formerly known as Saartjie Baartman, I knew the back story but even with that knowledge in my pocket I was still left mesmerized and deeply moved by Suzan's interpretation and intensity. Yeah I know she got a MacArthur Genius Grant but seriously she is so crazy fricking smart b/c she knows how to connect history and make it relevant to not only current events but to our human psyche and spirit and that's eternal and that why her writing always resonates so crunkly for me. For info on Hottentot Venus check this site out and of course Wikipedia and I really liked this online art project on her too! The woman who played Saartjie (Bridgit Antoinette Evans) was incredibly entrancing. I felt her pain, and sometimes even, figured her pain was somehow mixed-in with Saartjie's. Her tears were real. And her portrayal had to be honest and complex cause Parks's depiction of this Hottentot Venus was not simply as a victim, but as this sister who could flow in French, liked chocolates and so desperately just wanted to be more than the other woman-- she wanted to be truly loved by the doctor who had bought/ rescued her from the circus (literal and symbolic) of her life. So much so that according to Parks' dramatization, she was a bit complicit in her own exploitation. That part had me bugging because in all of my undergrad theorization of the Hottentot Venus phenom, I NEVER saw her as being a hustler, but in this presentation it worked and reminded me of how girls nowadays get caught up whether it be the video chick or the girl around the way who wants some man's attention. It was deep y'all.

Talking about Black women's bodies. It looks like the controversy over Idol pics and whose naked image gets her tossed and whose image gets her fan sympathy continues to boil. Go get em Frenchie!