Black Pearl Sings BKG 1617x1055
Black Pearl Sings!
By Frank HigginsBlack Pearl Sings!
By Frank HigginsA search for undiscovered folk music leads Susannah, an ambitious “song collector,” to an African-American prisoner. Pearl holds a treasure-trove of unrecorded slave-era music, but can she hand over her ancestors’ songs without giving up something of herself?
The legacy of the past and hope for the future clash in this gripping new play, featuring great American folk tunes.
Running Time
Cast
Kathy Danzer*
Alice M. Gatling*
KATHY DANZER FST: Dinner With Friends, How I Learned to Drive. Crimes of the Heart (Broadway and National Tour), Biloxi Blues (National Tour and Papermill Playhouse). Regional: The Last Night of Ballyhoo (Hilton Head Arts Center), Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (Virginia Stage), A Shayna Maidel (Olney Theatre), Voice of the Prairie and Crossing Delancey (Capitol Rep), Beau Jest (Birmingham Theater), Steel Magnolias (Montana Rep), also A.C.T. Seattle, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Actors Theatre of Louisville. NYC: The Public, Playwrights Horizons, Lincoln Center, West Bank, Promenade.
ALICE M. GATLING heralds from Houston, TX where she has recently been seen in Doubt and To Kill a Mockingbird at the Alley Theater; Caroline, or Change at Main Street Theatre and the world premiere of Black Pearl Sings! at Stages Repertory Theatre. Her other Alley credits include The Exonerated, Our Lady of 121st Street, The Crucible, A Christmas Carol, From the Mississippi Delta and Antony and Cleopatra. She was recently seen in Nickel and Dimed at Stages Repertory Theater and Intimate Apparel at Main Street Theater. For The Ensemble Theatre she has appeared in For Colored Girls..., Brothers and Sisters, Husbands and Wives, Trials and Tribulations of Staggerlee, Flyin’ West, among others. In recent seasons in Houston, she has appeared in Fences, The Gospel at Colonus, The Piano Lesson (Best Actress award) and the encore staging of From the Mississippi Delta. She also directed The Colored Museum. She has been a company member at People’s Light and Theatre Company outside Philadelphia and a member of the Lincoln Theater Center Director’s Lab in New York. Her East Coast credits include Julius Caesar (Marc Antony), The Lives of Great Waitresses (OOBR award), The C Above C Above High C (National Black Theater Festival), Much Ado About Nothing, A Flea in Her Ear, and As You Like It, among others.
Creative
Director | Kate Alexander
Costume Designer | Marcella Beckwith
Lighting Designer | Mike Foster
Scenic & Projection Designer | Roman Tatarowicz
Production Stage Manager | Dean Curosmith*
* Denotes member of Actors' Equity Association. The Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.