Sunday, August 22, 2010

Clementine Hunter, Nellie Lutcher, Marie Therese Coincoin come to stage via Originals Company and Mahogany Ensemble Theater; tour of 10 cities in Sept, Nov


Angelique Feaster, Artspace
Originally uploaded by trudeau
The “Originals” Company will perform three of Carolyn Woosley’s plays in its ten-week tour around Louisiana in September, with highlights to be featured at the New Orleans Fringe Festival in November, says Penny J Miller. The “Louisiana Women: Originals” Company tour is produced in association with the Mahogany Ensemble Theatre, which will be touring from its home base in Shreveport.

The “Louisiana Women: Originals” Company will feature three plays exploring the lives of pioneering African-American women, and their influences on music, art, and the complicated history of race and family relations in Louisiana. The “Originals” Company celebrates the lives of primitive painter and former Melrose Plantation cook, Clementine Hunter, who will be played by Angelique Feaster; plantation owner and matriarch of the Cane River colony of Free People of Color, Marie Thérèse Coincoin, with the role shared on alternate weeks by Kendra Cherie’ Gray and Sharon Penson; and Lake Charles native jazz pianist, vocalist, and composer Nellie Lutcher, as portrayed in their shared role by Wilma Moore Young and Neverlyn Townsel. Carolyn Graves will understudy the role of Clementine Hunter.

The “Originals” Company is under the direction of Angelique Feaster, founder and artistic director of the Mahogany Ensemble Theatre, the resident theatre of the M.E.C.C.A. Foundation (Mahogany Expressions of Culture and Creative Arts). Feaster is the founding producer of the Southern Black Theatre Festival in Shreveport, which will take place this September 16 – 26, 2010 in Shreveport.

The “Originals” Company tour culminates in performances at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art during the New Orleans Fringe Festival in mid-November.

The “Originals” Company will be appearing in the following venues:

Lockport
Bayou Playhouse
September 10 - 12, 2010

Minden
Webster Junior High School
September 16, 2010

Shreveport
Louisiana State Exhibit Museum
September 17, 2010

Minden
Christopher’s
September 18, 2010

Shreveport
Louisiana State Exhibit Museum
September 19, 2010

Lake Charles
Lake Charles Little Theatre
October 1 – 3, 2010

Crowley
Rice Theater
October 22 – 24, 2010

Baton Rouge
Manship Theatre
October 29 – 31, 2010

New Orleans
Ogden Museum of Southern Art
November 15 – 21, 2010

Info about tickets, performance dates, and venues: producer, Leslie Berman, at 337.515.6479.
Media information including company bios and feature stories: Penny J. Miller, Publicist and Marketing Director, at 337.438.3038.

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