RHAPSODY IN BLACK Set for Capitol Center for the Arts, 2/12

Leland Gannt's powerful one-man performance examining the question of race in America, Rhapsody in Black, comes to Concord's Capitol Center for the Arts on Friday, February 12 at 8pm. Tickets for this intimate Spotlight Café performance start at $15 and are on sale now.

Rhapsody in Black: written and performed by LeLand Gantt and developed at NYC's Actors Studio with Estelle Parsons as directorial consultant, is a one-man show that explores LeLand's personal journey to understanding and eventually transcending racism in America. We follow his spellbinding life story-from an underprivileged childhood in the ghettos of McKeesport, Pennsylvania to teenage experiments with crime and drugs to scholastic achievement and an acting career that land adult LeLand in situations where he is virtually the only African-American in the room. How he manages to cope with the various psychological effects of consistently being marked The Other is recounted in remarkable and exquisitely moving detail, guaranteed to leave lasting impressions.

LeLand Gantt - Writer, Performer: Rhapsody in Black was first unveiled at the WorkShop Theater Company's Sundays @ Six reading series in March 2013. Further development at The Actors Studio yielded a slot in their Playwrights/Directors Unit's spring festival in May 2013 and, subsequently, a three-week workshop run in December 2013 and a return run at WorkShop Theater in February 2014. In November 2014 it played the United Solo Festival in New York where it won awards for Best Storyteller (LeLand Gantt) and Best Direction (Estelle Parsons). Mr. Gantt's regional credits include: Two Trains Running and Radio Golf (Syracuse Stage); Walter Mosley's The Fall of Heaven, world premier (Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park);Gem of the Ocean (Arena Stage), Jitney (Pittsburgh Public Theater), and In Walks Ed (Longwharf Theater). Off-Broadway/Broadway: Slippery When Wet (La Mama), Another Man's Poison (Peter Jay Sharpe Theater), OyamO's Killa Dilla and Let Me Live (Drama Desk and Audelco Award nominee for Featured Actor), and the revival of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (u/s Rock Dutton). Film and television credits include: Miracle at St. Anna, Requiem for a Dream, Malcolm X, Presumed Innocent, Law and Order, Law and Order SVU, J.A.G., and HBO's The Affair.

Estelle Parsons - Directorial Consultant: Ms. Parsons won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1967 for her role as Blanche Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde. Among her most noted television roles, she played Roseanne's mother on the award-winning sitcom Roseanne. She played the title role in Miss Margarita's Way on Broadway and the National tour, and Violet Weston in August: Osage County on Broadway and the national tour. Ms. Parsons' directing credits include: a multi-cultural Anthony and Cleopatra described as "the most exciting and innovative presentation in English since Peter Brook's A Midsummer Night's Dream" at the Belasco Theater; Flaubert's Madame Bovary adapted by Adrienne Kennedy at the Signature Theater, NYC; Oedipus the King (Yeats adaptation) and Salome: The Reading (Oscar Wilde) with Al Pacino at the Bardavon, on Broadway, and the National tour. Nominated four times for the Tony Award, Ms. Parsons was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2004.

Ticket Prices: $20 Adults $15 Students. Tickets are on sale now and can be purchased via phone at 603-225-1111, online at www.ccanh.com, and at the box office, located at 44 South Main Street, Concord, NH 03301, on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

To post a comment, you must register and login.