Spotlight: ETHIOPIA at Baltimore Theatre Project
ETHIOPIA - Black artists come together!
The long-awaited world premiere of the first “living newspaper,” ETHIOPIA concludes IN Series’ 2024-25 season. The work was banned by the Roosevelt administration and never performed, until now.
Written in 1937, this production fuses theater and music to tell the hot-off-the-press story of Italy’s colonialist attack on Haile Selassie’s Ethiopia while the world stayed silent. This reconstruction, with vivid new texts, is the brainchild of DC writer Sybil R. Williams (STORMY WEATHER, ALCESTE) who has teamed up with DC composer and pianist Janelle Gill (DESDEMONA, CHUCK & EVA) to imagine a new musical realization inspired by the music of Emahoy Tsege, an Ethiopian luminary artist known as “the honky tonk nun.”
Williams and Gill expand the vision of the original work to explore how America’s Black and Brown communities responded to Europe’s aggression, and particularly the story of Mayme Richardson, a leading black soprano that became an activist for the Ethiopian causes. Jazz, classical, and African music blend and soar in this history-making musical moment.
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