Aguirre, Lo, Ramirez Celebrate Power of Huelga—Strike! by Patricia L. Morin TheatreFirst’s audio docu-drama “More Than Grapes” captures the plight of thousands of abused grape pickers from 1965-1970 in Delano. Using undated reel-to-reel “Field Tapes” found in an abandoned school, writers Carlos Aguirre, Jeffrey Lo, and Lisa Ramirez create a kaleidoscope of historical and…
Erika Dickerson-Despenza’s Poetry Brings Beauty to Disaster by Robert M. Gardner & Barry David Horwitz The New York Public Theater is offering a world premiere audio play, “Shadow/Land,” powered by poetry, music, and a stellar cast. In 2005, two Black women trapped by the floods of Hurricane Katrina, expose the dual disasters of racism…
Lisa Ramirez Thrills with a Hundred Years of Disasters by Barry David Horwitz April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. –T.S. Eliot, “The Waste Land” (1922) In 1922, T.S. Eliot, an American living in exile in…
Lydia R. Diamond Refocuses US on Poverty & Racism by Patricia L. Morin & Barry David Horwitz In Lydia R. Diamond’s audio-drama of Toni Morrison’s first novel, The Bluest Eye (1970), disembodied voices tell the tragic story of an outcast little Black girl. That girl, rejected and despised, lives in backwoods Lorain, Ohio, Morrison’s…