Tag Archives: Chat Atkins

M Ensemble Again Does Justice To Wilson’s Two Trains Running

Langston Hughes wrote of “a dream deferred” from the elevated promontory of poetry; but the great playwright August Wilson wrote from the street what it was like living through a dream being deferred. And once again, M Ensemble captures the very essence of an era in Wilson’s Two Trains Running, honored by a cast inhabiting the vibrant array of residents and deftly orchestrated direction.

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M Ensemble’s 1972 River Niger Captures Conflict in Black Lives

M Ensemble Company revives the 1972 award-winning The River Niger capturing a crossroads in Black life in America with a depiction of passionate, intelligent people debating diametrically opposed philosophies of how Black citizens should fight for justice in a racist world.

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M Ensemble Sings the Harlem Blues for an Alabama Sky

If it’s possible to capture the depth and breadth of a tumultuous vibrant time and place by just focusing on the intersecting lives of five ordinary people, in this case Harlem in 1930, then Pearl Cleage’s Blues for an Alabama Sky comes close, notably in this production by the M Ensemble Company.

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M Ensemble’s Seven Guitars Is Virtually Music As Theater

In the current production of The M Ensemble Company, August Wilson’s legendary Seven Guitars almost plays like a musical or a folk opera akin to Porgy and Bess or Floyd Collins.

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Uplifting ‘Flyin’ West Is Powerful History From M Ensemble

Leave it to M Ensemble to teach an audience a bit of Black history in Pearl Cleage’s Flyin’ West , while entertaining the masses.

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Ethan Henry & Makeba Pace Give Superb Farewell Performances In M Ensemble’s Fine Fences

Rage and defiance – against racism, against betrayal, against cruelty, fate and death itself – washes out into the audience with a ferocity rarely seen in Florida theater in The M Ensemble Company’s powerful production of August Wilson’s masterpiece Fences.

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Volcanic Ethan Henry Erupts In M Ensemble’s The Piano Lesson

Imagine white water rapids raging past you; now imagine the liquid is molten lava – a heedless force of nature threatening to destroy everything. Such images are the by-product of watching the incomparable Ethan Henry bringing one of August Wilson’s tragic heroes to three-dimensional life in M Ensemble’s The Piano Lesson.

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