For additional information, please contact Marketing and Communications Manager Natalie Genter-Gilmore at natalie@profiletheatre.org or call 503.242.0080.

Antigone Project Media Release

Click on the thumbnails below to download the Photos files.

Andrea White and Cecily Overman in “Hang Ten,” part of Antigone Project: A Play in 5 Parts playing at Profile Theatre September 7-11, 2016. Photo by Owen Carey.

Seth Rue in “Hang Ten,” part of Antigone Project: A Play in 5 Parts playing at Profile Theatre September 7-11, 2016. Photo by Owen Carey.

Lauren Modica in “Medallion,” part of Antigone Project: A Play in 5 Parts playing at Profile Theatre September 7-11, 2016. Photo by Owen Carey.

Chris Murray in “Medallion,” part of Antigone Project: A Play in 5 Parts playing at Profile Theatre September 7-11, 2016. Photo by Owen Carey.

Alex Leigh Ramirez in “Antigone Arkhe,” part of Antigone Project: A Play in 5 Parts playing at Profile Theatre September 7-11, 2016. Photo by Owen Carey.

Andrea Whittle in “Antigone Arkhe,” part of Antigone Project: A Play in 5 Parts playing at Profile Theatre September 7-11, 2016. Photo by Owen Carey.

Andrea Whittle in “Antigone Arkhe,” part of Antigone Project: A Play in 5 Parts playing at Profile Theatre September 7-11, 2016. Photo by Owen Carey.

Andrea White in “A Stone’s Throw,” part of Antigone Project: A Play in 5 Parts playing at Profile Theatre September 7-11, 2016. Photo by Owen Carey.

Seth Rue and Lauren Modica in “A Stone’s Throw,” part of Antigone Project: A Play in 5 Parts playing at Profile Theatre September 7-11, 2016. Photo by Owen Carey.

Cecily Overman and Chris Murray in “Red Again,” part of Antigone Project: A Play in 5 Parts playing at Profile Theatre September 7-11, 2016. Photo by Owen Carey.

Cecily Overman and Andrea White in “Red Again,” part of Antigone Project: A Play in 5 Parts playing at Profile Theatre September 7-11, 2016. Photo by Owen Carey.

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Antigone is the gut-wrenching finale to Sophocles’ soul-and- spirit-wrenching Oedipus trilogy, which details the rise, fall, and inevitable fulfillment of prophecy of Oedipus. Following his timely death in the previous installment, Oedipus at Colonus, his lifelong battle with fate is passed down to his next of kin – sons Eteocles and Polyneices and our titular heroine, daughter Antigone. Their prophecy, foretold by the prophet Teiresias, states that the two brothers will kill each other in a battle for their late father’s seat as the King of Thebes. Antigone returns to Thebes, hoping to halt this prophecy, only to discover her brothers already dead and Polyneice’s body rotting in the town square. Creon, believing Polyneice a traitor, has made it illegal for him to receive proper burial rites. Refusing to accept Creon’s word as law, Antigone decides to bury her brother, leading to her imprisonment. Knowing she likely faces torture and death, Antigone hangs herself in her cell, defying Creon once again. In the wake of her suicide, Creon’s son (Antigone’s fiance) is stricken by grief and kills himself as well, leaving Creon to end the play in anguish.

Antigone is, at its heart, a story of defiance, of civil disobedience, of doing what is morally right in the face of unjust laws. The entire Oedipus trilogy revolves around these themes but the previous two installments focus mainly on the conflict of free will vs. fate (or prophecy). The battles are heady and internal and in many cases a character’s enemy is themselves, or what they may one day be. But Antigone is unique in that the prophecy has been fulfilled before Antigone ever enters Thebes. Her brothers lay dead and the wrong person is in power. So, what is she going to do about it?

For once, it is up to her.

As long as we as a society have governments and centralized powers, stories of civil disobedience will resonate. We often hear of protests and boycotts, walk-outs and sit-ins; in this Post-Ferguson, Post-Occupy world, people are realizing the power of like-minded groups. But what if you have no group? Antigone stands alone throughout the play. Her family is dead and the city she once called home is against her. She is a young woman fighting for what she knows to be right in a patriarchal society which views her as objectively lesser. It is not an uphill battle; it is a gravity-defying climb up a jagged rock face in a storm. Still she is defiant to her last breath.

Antigone is the perfect example of fighting for what is right, of overcoming the odds, of looking fate in the eyes and saying “not today”. Many ancient Greek plays became archaic long ago – but Antigone holds up and speaks as true today as the day it was written.

-London Bauman
Profile Dramaturgy Intern

Get tickets to Antigone Project: A Play in 5 Parts

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What does it mean to be a character? What does it mean to be a person? How many lives can one person live? How can Spider-Man be black?

The answers to all of these questions usually mix together and boil down to two key principles of story-telling: the speaker and the audience; or, what the story means to the person telling it and who they are shaping it for. Perhaps they change certain important aspects of the story and yet keep others. Maybe a character changes gender or the setting is shifted a thousand years. It is very rare for a story and all its details to stay enduringly unique forever – which is why modernized Shakespeare plays are the norm and why in the current Marvel canon, the man under the Spider-Man mask is Miles Morales – an outcast black teen from New York – following Peter Parker’s death in past issues. One explanation is simply that the next man to receive Spidey’s superpowers just happened to be of African-American descent; a coincidence.

But nothing in storytelling is a coincidence.

So, the other explanation is that the story of Spider-Man, a nerdy teen who didn’t fit in from New York (a city which is 30% Black), resonates with young African-Americans and tells a story which makes sense and inspires a demographic who doesn’t typically get to see themselves represented by super heroes. A classic story of heroics and redemption is taken and reworked when a new storyteller took up the pen and a new audience was designated as the listeners.

The exact same mechanic is at work amid all 5 stories of  Antigone Project, as 5 different playwrights take the basic framework of the ancient Greek story Antigone and dissect it, scrutinizing it’s details and fitting them into a fresh skin with new words and characters but the same few strands of truth present in all of them. In Tanya Barfield’s Medallion, Antigone is embodied in Antoinette, a young African-American woman demanding she receive the purple heart she believes is owed to her deceased brother from Carlton (Creon), who tells her she “oversteps herself” with her requests. It is a story of civil disobedience and rightful burial just as Sophocles’ 2500 year old play is and the same resonant strands are present, but it is a new tale told by a new teller and for a new audience. It is not a rendition, nor it is an homage, but a retelling – allowing Antigone and her fight to breathe in the air of 1918 and show how different times are … or, exactly the same.

All 5 playwrights within Antigone Project offer their own personal reworking of Antigone and her struggle while mixing in their own intimate impressions of the ancient woman they write about. Sometimes it is startlingly different, sometimes entirely familiar. It all depends on who tells the story and who they tell it for.

-London Bauman
Profile Dramaturgy Intern

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“The long arc of a body of work is vital to a thriving American theater, and I’m both honored by and enthusiastic about Profile’s unique focus. Here’s to a season of reflection and looking forward!” – Quiara Alegría Hudes.

The work of Quiara Alegría Hudes immerses us in the complexities and contradictions of community, legacy and family. Steeped in music – from classical to jazz to Latin to hip-hop – the plays of Ms. Hudes introduce us to characters ripe with humor whose tragic flaws, bone-deep loyalties and grit determination hook us and draw us into their stories. Her language – a high-wire act between poetry and contemporary conversation – illuminates the souls of her characters; soldiers, addicts, divorcees, music teachers, estranged parents, ghosts, stuntwomen – a band of misfits who, through her artistry, find a kind of healing in plays full of laughter, tears and a fierce passion for living.

Profile is pleased to present four of Ms. Hudes’ award winning plays, including the entirety of the Elliot Trilogy: Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue (Finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Drama); Water By the Spoonful (Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama) and The Happiest Song Plays Last. And in one of the most ambitious projects in Profile history, the final two titles will be performed in a rotating repertory for an immersive experience with these electrifying plays.

2017 Quiara Alegría Hudes Season

On Saturday November 18th, Quiara visited Portland and spent the day with Profile Theater!

Read more here: https://profiletheatre.org/uncategorized/in-conversation/

Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue
February 2-19, 2017
Nineteen-year-old Lance Corporal Elliot Ortiz, U.S.M.C. is a recently anointed hometown hero who returns from the Iraq War with a leg injury and a difficult question: Will he go back to war a second time? Tracing the legacy of combat service through three generations of a Puerto Rican family, this evocative, lyrical and occasionally humorous tale explores how the landscape of the soul is transformed by war. (Play one of the Elliot trilogy)
Click here for an ASL interpreted description.

26 Miles
June 15 – 25, 2017
A desperate midnight phone call spurs a spontaneous road trip for a brilliant teen and her estranged mother. The reunited pair runs fast and furious from the secrets in their lives. So what if reality is nipping at their heels? Colliding together, they find connection, forgiveness and a part of their identities that has been missing all along.
Click here for an ASL interpreted description.

Water By the Spoonful
Plays in rotating repertory with the Happiest Song Plays Last.
November 1-19, 2017
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Somewhere in Philadelphia, Elliot has returned from the war in Iraq and is struggling to find his place in the world. Somewhere in a chat room, recovering addicts forge an unbreakable bond of support and love.  In this fearless, heart-stirring Pulitzer Prize–winner, worlds virtual and real unfold onstage, challenging our notions of family, forgiveness, community and courage.  (Play two of the Elliot trilogy)
Click here for an ASL interpreted description.

The Happiest Song Plays Last
Plays in rotating repertory with Water by the Spoonful.
November 1-19, 2017
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Iraq War vet Elliot has a bright new career: movie star. But shooting a film on location in Jordan, with the tumultuous Arab Spring rumbling nearby, he finds that his wartime nightmares have followed him into his new life. Back in Philadelphia, his cousin Yaz has her hands full cooking for the homeless and trying to keep her beloved community from crumbling. Set to the joyful sounds of traditional Puerto Rican folk music, this final play of Hudes’ trilogy chronicles a year in the life of these two kindred souls as they search for love, meaning and a sense of hope in a quickly changing world. (Play three of the Elliot trilogy)
Click here for an ASL interpreted description.

In Dialogue Staged Readings
In Dialogue Staged Readings include new and contemporary plays in conversation with Quiara Alegría Hudes’ body of work, as well as readings of Hudes plays not in the Main Stage season.  Staged Readings will be announced throughout the season.

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Season selection is one of the most important, exciting and challenging aspects of an Artistic Director’s job.  A good season is one that balances different kinds of stories, different styles, big questions, comedies and dramas, etc. through the presentation of a carefully curated series of plays.  It is one part jigsaw puzzle and one part tightrope act!  At Profile, our mission of featuring the work of a single playwright each year adds another layer of complexity – what single playwright can provide all of that within their body of work?

For our first 17 years, we looked primarily to the master writers of the 20th century – the playwrights who are household names, who show up in all of the drama textbooks.  But recently with Sarah Ruhl and Tanya Barfield, Profile has started to shift where we look for excellent writers, towards playwrights who are in the midst of creating their body of work – the ones who will be featured in the next generation of textbooks!  To identify these writers, the Artistic Director begins by talking to people – asking friends and colleagues around the country “Who has work that is exciting to you?  Who is shaping the field and changing the game?”

Through these conversations and the Artistic Director’s own knowledge, a list begins to take shape.  Then begins the hunt to find a way to contact the playwrights.  Usually this is done through the playwright’s agent who, excited by the prospect of their client being featured for an entire season, is eager to help us and get the Artistic Director the materials they need to really familiarize themselves with the writer’s work.

And then….the reading.  Oh, the reading!  At this point the Artistic Director may ask other Profile staff or interns to take a look at some of the scripts to provide feedback and a sounding board. But it primarily falls to the Artistic Director to read each of the scripts and decide if the artist is a good candidate to be a Profile featured playwright.

What makes a good candidate?  The most important thing is excellence – excellent writing and storytelling, complex and nuanced characters, plays that grapple with big questions and compelling issues.  After that, it gets more complicated….  We look for the playwright to have a fair amount of variety within their body of work – different styles of storytelling, variation in structure and rhythm, a diversity of themes and questions within the plays.  And then the vagaries and practicalities of production scale must come into play.  Ultimately, Profile is a fairly small organization producing in intimate spaces.  While we might daydream about an epic Stephen Sondheim season, the cost of large casts, complicated costumes, huge sets, big design teams etc. mean that we do not have the capacity or the means to produce a season of such large shows.  Thankfully, there is a huge pool of talented writers in the field who create plays of all shapes and sizes – it is just about finding the right person at the right moment in both their career and our life as an organization.
In the end, like with all other companies, selecting a Profile playwright and season is a balancing act – balancing excellent writing, a dynamic body of work and our capacity as an organization to do that work justice, presenting strong and compelling productions to you, our audience and community.

-Lauren Bloom Hanover, Interim Artistic Director

Profile Theatre has partnered with Metropolitan Learning Center for 14 years, sending exceptional teaching artists to teach a class called Theatre Arts. Juniors and seniors explore all aspects of theatre through the lens of our season’s featured playwright.

This school year, Profile is offering a second residency at MLC, and this time it’s for freshman and sophomores! Veteran teaching artist Katherine Lewis has spent the last couple months working with a group of students, many of whom are experiencing theatre for the first time.

Using physical activities, games, writing exercises and discussions, Katherine has helped the students form an ensemble. They researched the Antigone myth, and then read Profile’s next main stage play, Fall Festival: Antigone Project. Now the students are creating their own version of Antigone, based on their lives and concerns. Katherine’s MLC students went from being too shy to speak in class to standing at a mic in front of a crowd! Several of them presented excerpts from their work-in-progress to the gathered audience before a recent production of Blue Door.

If you’d like to see what Profile residencies foster, check out the final presentation by the younger class of MLC students, which is open to the pubic.

Monday, June 6th , at 7:30
The MLC Auditorium
2033 NW Glisan St, Portland, OR 97209

Profile Theatre is proud to be partnering with Blacque Butterfly Presents on the In Dialogue Main Stage events for The Antigone Project: A Play in Five Parts.  We have collaborated to feature a series of local spoken-word artists performing in our lobby prior to each performance of the production.  Mirroring the collection of diverse voices embodied in Antigone Project, the artists are from varied backgrounds, experiences and perspectives, all of which come to bear on the profound and provocative  work that they will be sharing with our audiences.

To find out more about Antigone Project, click here.
To see past In Dialogue Events, click here.

Wednesday, September 7th:
Angela Davise | 6:55pm

Thursday, September 8th:
ShaRhonda McCauley | 6:55pm

Friday, September 9th:
Nafisaria Scroggins-thomas  and Akela Jaffi | 6:55pm

Saturday, September 10th Matinee:
GG Warren and Anayla Warren-Premsingh** | 1:25pm

Saturday, September 10th Evening:
Habiba Addo | 6:55pm

Sunday, September 11th:
Wilma Alcock and Blacque Butterfly** | 1:25pm

(**): Mother-Daughter Pairing

Additionally, as part of our year-long collaboration with Geezer Gallery, we will be displaying the work of Farooq Hassan in our lobby for the duration of this production.  Mr. Hassan’s varied exploration of the female form and the female psyche reflect the versatility of expression embodied in The Antigone Project.

Artist Bios:

Habiba Addo is a native of Ghana, West Africa.  She holds a degree in Theater and a Certificate of Dance from Portland State University.  She has performed and taught in the United States and internationally for over fifteen years.  She teaches and performs dance, rhythm and stories from Ghana, Guinea, Gambia and Senegal.  She also shares the rich African cultures present today in Cuba and Brazil. A guest teacher and performer for Portland Public Schools for over fifteen years, Habiba has also performed and taught the community in dance, storytelling and theater through organizations such as Young Audiences, White Bird, Oregon Ballet Theater, Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center, Tygres Heart Shakespeare Company, Mambo Queens, Northwest Afrikan American Ballet, Montessori Schools, Cedarwood Woldorf School, Oregon Episcopal School, Miracle Theater, Milagro Bailadores and Portland State University’s World Dance Office. She is a recipient of the Lila Jewel award (2000), an Arts Alive grant (2000) and multiple technical assistant grants from Regional Arts and Culture Council (1998, 2002 and 2012).

Wilma Alcock – Wilma has written poetry as a Write around Portland participant and spokesperson.  She was also  featured in Give!Guide and the voice of the Portland Harbor River clean project and she is also a freedom writer.

Akela Auer “Akela Jaffi” is a Portland native. She has been performing since she was small because it’s in her bloodline and because she knows nothing else. While her craft is made up of many different mediums, dance has been her main boo for over a decade. She recognizes the power movement has to open up the darkest doors of the self and inspire others to seek within for guidance. She intends to always dance as a form of prayer and healing.

Darlene Solomon “Blacque Butterfly – Blacque Butterfly is an entertainer. Her love for the arts has allowed her to explore several layers of her calling. Be it spoken word, motivational speaking, singing, dancing, theater or event promoting she has allowed the Creator to use her ministry to inspire others to follow their calling. Darlene is a native Oregonian, born and raised in NE Portland she has released and published a chapbook entitled “Black girl can I comb your hair” and a spoken word CD entitled Collide -A – Scope (Where life, love and grace collide.) She is currently in the studio working on her sophomore project. She is featured on a variety of collaborative projects.

Angela Davise, Georgia born,  California Grown,  Portland Grounded, started her journey with musical expression several years ago.  From the time she was a child she searched for outlets to release the emotional depth of her heart through the expression of, poetry, art, and dance. The music of Angela Davise evokes an emotional response to the deepest of secret cries within the heart.  The total abandonment to the world of listeners to be completely transparent in songwriting paints a very clear picture of struggle and survival, sadness and joy, defeat overcome by victorious cries of an unrelenting hope.

Farooq Hassan spent his youth in crowded cafes and on the docks in Iraq, striving to capture on paper the colorful scenes playing out before his eyes. As a young man, he taught high school. “We did our best to create art, not politics,” Hassan recalls. For 50 years he built his standing as an artist. His work was exhibited in London, Amman, Basrah, and Baghdad. In Iraq, he was considered a national treasure.

Then, politics changed his life forever. Between 1980 and 1991 Hassan moved 22 times, always one step ahead of political strife in Bagdad. Life in Iraq was especially perilous. In 2010, Hassan and his wife, Haifa, joined their daughter in Portland. Hassan was 71 years old and he had lost everything: his reputation as a master artist, the paintings he had created in Iraq, and his home. So, he set about renewing himself through painting.

ShaRhonda “Rose City MissChief” McCauley is a spoken word and hip-hop performance and recording artist.  The rapoet most recently self-published and released her first anthology of poetry called Rhyme Scheme:  Power Edition Volume 1.  The Portland, OR native has performed at many community events, schools, and local concerts as a soloist and as a group as one of the original members of the hip-hop trio Rose Bent.  She recorded two projects with the group and also a limited play spoken word album and mixtape as a soloist.  She has collaborated with many other local talents and has had opportunities to showcase her talents in other regions as well.

Sherrie Warren “GG Warren” – GG Warren is a writer, photographer, bass player, jewelry designer, licensed massage therapist, and proud mother. Her writing stems from emotions, and situations she has personally experienced, or what she would like to experience. Love, loss, tragedy, loneliness, triumph, and undefinable happiness are all her inspirations.

Anayla Warren-Premsingh – Anayla Warren-Premsingh is 18 years old and just graduated from Jefferson high school. She will be attending the University of Oregon in the fall. Her major is undeclared, but she’s looking into getting into international studies and minoring business, or possibly, majoring in human physiology. She started writing “creatively” when she could string words together in a sentence on a piece of paper. She writes poetry and short (and maybe one day) long, stories.

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Photo courtesy of Tony Funchess

On Sunday, April 10th, a group of men of color attended the matinee of Blue Door and then had a private discussion, led by community activist Tony Funchess, in the rehearsal hall following the play. Below are Mr. Funchess’ thoughts on that discussion and Blue Door.

We all have a story to tell! The story that men tell in public, a story of confidence, strength, assuredness is not always the story they keep locked within. Lewis, the reflection of so many men of color allows us the ability to cross the chasm that exist between the full “dimensionality” of being a man, and a man of color. As we sit in the theater we are transformed into the role of primary in our own narrative as we each assume a role and identity of Lewis’ as he is visited by his ancestors on his reflective journey into his past; the road map to defining and finding himself.

This journey of introspection and liberation is not one easily taken. As the men who showed up for this experience of watching Blue Door and the post post-show discussion that took place for men of color, expressed behind closed doors. This experience of having an affinity space; a space solely for men of color, became a transformative space. Guards down, titles set aside, and brotherhood established we discussed our experiences with American theater, predominantly white spaces, and our commonalty in struggle as men of color, as well as our shared desire for liberation.

As we reflected on Lewis’ journey we discussed the recent scientific discovery of genetic memory of experiencing encoded into our DNA, the impacts of Mass Incarceration, the historical fairy tale of the black man as rapist, and our own journey’s that brought us into this circle. These men who had traveled from as far as Texas, and southern Oregon to be in this room expressed their deep need for spaces like these were the truth of our strength, and frailty can be discussed without damage to our external images.

The insomnia of Tanya Barfield’s Blue Door is the waking nightmare that many men of color experience in silence. Conditioned by society to “man up” we are often denied the opportunity to “let our hair down” and just be. As men of color there is this ever present awareness of our own presence in a room and the recognition of the multiplicity of thoughts and judgements about our presence in that room. Well thanks to Profile Theater this time the room was just ours. It was a room of breathing; exhaling the frustration of societal pressures to live up to ideologies often foreign to our internal design and historical make-up, and inhaling; the friendship, brotherhood, and healing of transparency in expression without pretense.

This room was our Blue Door the symbol of locking the evil of this world out and keeping the harmony of self and family in throughout eternity. This process of shared existence and experience is one that we must all approach in our own time and in our own way. Thanks to the intentional directorial approach to this piece, Bobby Bermea focuses with laser precision, a moon beam for us to follow out of the dark night of hidden history and identity and into the liberated space of fullness as men of color. Undeniably a need story to be told and experience to be had.

-Tony Funchess

I don’t know about you, but I love history. Sit me down in front of The History Channel with some popcorn and several hours and suddenly you have a very happy person. Blue Door, the next magical installment of this Tanya Barfield season is chock full of interesting (and sometimes heart-wrenching) historical tid-bits. One of these is right in the title: Blue Door. Why Blue? Why Door? Let’s discuss.

Momma in Blue Door suggests, “Paint dis do’way blue. Keep d’ good spirits in. Keep d’ghost out.” According to the Gullah people (descendants of enslaved Africans from the lowcountry of Georgia and South Carolina) the color blue was thought to ward off ghosts or “haints” who, for whatever reason, had not moved onto the spirit world or who had malicious intent.

Okay, but still why blue? It is believed that haints can’t cross water, so African slaves would mix up a batch of “haint blue” milk paint and invoke the idea of water with the color blue. Though the practice of painting porches “haint blue” later became one of those, “It’s just what we do!” And we don’t know why kind of practices in the south, don’t be fooled! The Gullah people did it first.

The exact hue of haint blue is hard to pin down as it was generally produced from milk paint (a modern recipe for eco-friendly, indigo milk paint can be found here) a blend of lime, milk protein, pigment, and any kind of reliable binder such as eggs. As you can imagine with such a general ingredient as “pigment” the hue of the pigment and what it was derived from varied widely. Though, a lighter egg-shell blue is often associated with haint blue.

So, who were these people and how come it is such a common practice? The Gullah people were descended from African slaves who came from regions that were naturally sweltering, humid and where rice plantations were common. Their tolerance for malaria and yellow fever (diseases prone to cultivate in warm, humid weather) was relatively high so while the European settlers were dying from the disease, they were not. As a result, by the start of the 18th century the lowcountry region was primarily black. This isolation allowed African slaves more freedom to cultivate and perpetuate their traditions including (you guessed it) the blue door.

-Hannah Nutter, Dramaturgy Intern

Throughout the run of Blue Door, Profile is partnering with The Children’s Book Bank on their project, A Story Like Mine.

Books are most effective when they are relevant to children’s lives, but our current inventory of culturally diverse books is not nearly sufficient to meet the need of the wide diversity of children and families we serve.  To bridge the gap between the need for culturally diverse books and the lack of availability, we are launching “A Story Like Mine.”  Your support of this project helps us make more culturally diverse books available for all of the children we serve.

So many of the themes in Blue Door connect with storytelling and connection to culture through our shared stories and histories. Profile is thrilled to partner with The Children’s Book Bank on this important work. Children seeing their lives and cultures reflected in the books they read help them become more grounded and whole adults.

When you come to see Blue Door, bring new or gently used books featuring multicultural stories, characters and authors and drop them in our book box by the box office. Profile will deliver all book donations to the Children’s Book Bank when the show closes.

Want some ideas for kids books about African Americans?

Blue Door Director Bobby Bermea recommends Sounder, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, The Egypt Game and Malcolm X.

Actor Seth Rue loves The People Could Fly,  Mirandy and Brother Wind, Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters and The Snowy Day.

Playwright Tanya Barfield recommends Wilma Unlimited.