Tag Archives: Jean Hyppolite

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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Morisseau’s Skeleton Crew Is GableStage Benchmark Triumph

Amid a constellation of superb theater from GableStage comes a supernova of passion, pain and socio-political protest in a scorching drama Skeleton Crew. Its portrayal of African-American workers in a Detroit auto plant teetering on closing incisively examines racial issues that intensify impending tragedy, but also a world evaporating under our feet whuch crosses all demographic boundaries.

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Colored Museum’s Incisive Satire Could Not Be Better Timed

A thrilling cast and an impossibly talented young director from the African Heritage Cultural Arts Center mine all the raucous mirth and underlying blues in George C. Wolfe’s stinging social satire with music in The Colored Museum to depict the complex African-American experience and contemporary efforts to deal with its legacy.

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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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Preach: Praise For Return Of M Ensemble’s God’s Trombones

For those assigned to commit James Weldon Johnson’s narratives to memory in their younger days, M Ensemble’s God’s Trombones will wrap them in warm nostalgia. For others, M Ensemble skillful interpretation should elicit praise for introducing, and keeping, this important treasure of cultural history in the public eye.

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