You say you want a revolution? Well, you know On Q Productions is bringing it with its fourth season, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, It’ll Be Live!”. It all begins with Kiss My Black Angst (K.M.B.A), a grenade of one-act plays by three incendiary leaders of the Black Arts movement. Dutchman, the last play written by LeRoi Jones before he changed his name to Amiri Baraka, takes us aboard a NYC subway train. There a 20-year-old black man, Clay, meets an older white woman, Lula, who flirts and offers apples.
Directed by On Q founder Quentin Talley, what promises to be the story of Adam and Eve is destined to derail. Funnyhouse of a Negro by Adrienne Kennedy is another journey back to ’60s angst, directed by Jamila Reddy. We enter the nightmare world of Sarah, a woman who hates her blackness. With a noose around her neck, she has reasons. But reason may be exactly what Sarah has lost, for her mind is visited by — or schizophrenically divided into — four historic personalities, three white and one black. The evening is rounded out by a pair of mini-plays by Ed Bullins, The Theme Is Blackness and A Short Play for a Small Theater. $25. Sept. 15, 8 p.m., Sept. 16, 3 p.m., Sept. 19-20, 7:30 p.m., Sept. 21-22, 8 p.m. The Art Factory at Johnson C. Smith University, 1545 W. Trade St.
This article appears in Sep 12-18, 2012.
