Throwback Thursday: Meeting Anna Deveare Smith
Yesterday was an afternoon well-spent in Midtown: attending the matinee of Anna Deveare Smith’s new play #NotesFromTheField @ Second Stage Theater & enjoying a post-show discussion of the school-to-prison pipeline and creative process. I was fortunate enough to see the work by the generosity of my friend who is planning to film the play in 2017, and then to meet Ms. Deveare Smith briefly afterwards. Of the many brilliant characters from various walks of American life that were featured in the play, I most enjoyed her voicing of Congressman John Lewis (D-Georgia) who is the activist that remained most at the forefront of my consciousness during 2016 & the presidential election cycle, as he urged folks to vote.
On a more personal note: Anna Deveare Smith gave me a treasured, high compliment – that my sounds / performance style / interaction onstage with space remind her of Sweet Honey In The Rock. Some of my most precious praise for my creativity that I have received & was happy to learn that Ms. Deveare Smith is from Baltimore, Maryland, aka B-more & thus of the same mid-Atlantic region – #DMV represent!
( Anna Deveare Smith & Kandia Crazy Horse, backstage @ Second State Theater in Midtown NYC )
Either through its staging or the eventual film, looking forward to Notes From The Field speaking to a wider audience. It is a masterwork engaging with this hard, turbulent moment of murders, #BLM, Standing Rock and the “New Jim Crow” on the prison-industrial complex that Angela Davis, Ava DuVernay & several others have been holding forth on, even as one of the major prison strikes in U.S. history has been unfolding this season with very little notice or coverage. How primary school students in minority / underserved communities are being treated is something we all need to think long & hard about…
Kandia Crazy Horse live in Project Americana @ Symphony Space NYC on October 28
Thanks to my dear friends Ned Sublette & Constance Sublette, I will be performing later this month at an event related to their weighty tome about the domestic, Southeastern slave trade in America during the antebellum era: THE AMERICAN SLAVE COAST
Their book has won the 2016 American Book Award, and we are delighted to help illuminate the dark history about the networks of trading Virginia Africans into the Deep South, the roles of American Presidents Thomas Jefferson & Andrew Jackson aka “Sharp Knife” (known by we of Indian Country as a bane to Native Americans yet most are hardly aware of his ownership of enslaved Africans) in slave trading, and also bringing forth the narratives of the Africans brought to U.S. shores themselves — amongst my portion of performance, I shall be reading a “Letter From Virginia,” to represent ye olde home state.
This event of Project Americana will be at the Peter Jay Sharp Theatre of Symphony Space in Manhattan, 28 October @ 8pm. Right now, a limited amount of $10 tickets are available online: PROJECT AMERICANA – THE AMERICAN SLAVE COAST: LIVE
Hope to see y’all out! Here’s the gallery of outlaw artists who I will be performing with:
(Kandia Crazy Horse by Camara Dia Holloway)
(Nona Hendryx (of Labelle))
Carl Hancock Rux
Constance Sublette
New Orleans bandleader/composer Donald Harrison
Jonathan Demme
Lezlie Harrison
Ned Sublette by Constance Sublette
kandiacrazyhorse.com 