Tag Archives: Layon Gray
M Ensemble’s Searching for Willie Lynch Crosses Eras to Explore Inherited Trauma
Time, memory and history overlap in Layon Gray’s semi-surrealist Searching for Willie Lynch for M Ensemble exploring the legacy of the infamous Willie Lynch speech twhere characters from different periods coexist and interact across generations with themes of inherited trauma, history, division, and resilience within Black communities.
Female Army Combats Colonialism in The Dahomey Warriors
For the majority of white Americans, the word “colonialism” is an abstract term usually confined to history courses. But in Layon Gray’s consciousness-expanding drama The Dahomey Warriors, foreign powers occupying your homeland becomes a palpable personal three-dimensional tragedy at M Ensemble’s tale of an African tribe whose military was comprised of women.
Slavery & Mythos of the West Haunt M Ensemble’s Cowboy
M Ensemble’s production of Layon Gray’s Cowboy is everything audiences expect of a rousing western, but it’s also an inherent indictment. It is not of little significance that the play is presented with entirely Black actors in a genre that has only recently begun to welcome melanin in its ensembles.
M Ensemble’s Hosts A Cowboy John Wayne Never Knew
In Cowboy, the new dramatic play opening in June at M Ensemble in Miami, the gun-totin’ U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves, traditionally garbed down to the required Stetson, strides through the double doors of the saloon, secretly on the trail of two wanted criminals. But there’s a slight difference from the oaters in which Sheriff John Wayne restored justice to a sleepy town.
A Tight Family’s Tragic Past Is Key In Meet Me At The Oak
The dominating vision of The Tree and its dark violent past is a theatrical masterstroke from writer-director Layon Gray that opens a stirring Meet Me At The Oak, posting yet another strong offering for a revitalized M Ensemble.
M Ensemble Scores With Stirring Saga Of Race, Pride & Basketball In ‘The Kings of Harlem’
Music, sometimes tenderly introspective, sometimes upliftingly powerful, is deftly woven throughout the surging triumph of both the rise of the all-black 1939 New York Renaissance basketball team and M Ensemble’s moving recreation of the “Rens” banner year in Layon Gray’s Kings of Harlem.
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