![]() Music (sound design from Broken Chord) weaves flawlessly into the play, through the choir’s hymns, by turns joyful or anguished. Yet Margaret seems to have overlooked John 8:7, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone.” When Margaret’s husband, Luke (Chiké Johnson), returns, Margaret must reckon with her past mistakes. ![]() Unsurprisingly, her 18-year-old son, David (Antonio Michael Woodward), grates under her rigidity. In her house, “the Lord comes first,” even when that means leaving her family in crisis to visit a church chapter in Philadelphia. From the pulpit, she denounces sins including reading the funny pages - her standards are high and exacting. Pastor Margaret (Mia Ellis) seems graced by God, carrying herself with such certainty you’d think the Holy Spirit whispered straight into her ear. “The Amen Corner” proves that excellent direction and design, entrusted to an accomplished cast and creative team, can keep a decades-old play evocative and relevant. ![]() James Baldwin’s “The Amen Corner,” splendidly directed by Whitney White at the Shakespeare Theatre Company, offers a searing critique of religious orthodoxy and unforgiving moral expectations. Weathered old brick and burgundy carpets replace stained glass in Margaret Alexander’s church, where she warns a young mother, “Don’t let the lord have to take another child for you to do his bidding.” Her small flock gathers in the Harlem church faithfully to hear and mind her lyrical but stern preaching, raising their glorious voices in song. In both short texts, Baldwin examines racism and its horrific consequences that inevitably result in black suffering and pain.Photo of the cast of “The Amen Corner” by Scott Suchman. Central to African American culture, music (blues, jazz, and gospel music) plays an important role in Baldwin’s short stories and expresses his musical aesthetic which, following a West African philosophy, views such music as a sacred-secular continuum, rather than as a sacred-secular dichotomy. ![]() Both stories also topicalize the relationship between the individual and the community as well as the interplay of light and darkness. ![]() Both stories feature a main character who embarks on a quest to meet “the man” (an ambiguous phrase the stories explore in different ways) and undergoes a rite of passage. The paired reading of the short stories “Sonny’s Blues” and “Going to Meet the Man” from his 1965 collection Going to Meet the Man brings together two very distinct short prose texts and emphasizes their common themes and issues. Best known for prose works such as Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), Notes of a Native Son (1955), and The Fire Next Time (1963), James Baldwin is also a brilliant short story writer. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |