Kitchen Theatre Company to Present BLACK PEARL SINGS!, 12/4-22

The Kitchen Theatre Company's 23rd Season continues with a play set in the Great Depression, featuring a gripping story and gorgeous singing. The Kitchen is pleased to be producing the regional premiere of Black Pearl Sings! by Frank Higgins this December, with preview performances on December 4, 5, and 6. Opening Night is December 7th, and the play closes December 22.

It is 1933, and musicologist Susannah Mullaly is racing to record folk songs before the holders of the legacy are gone. Her search leads her to at Texas prison farm where she meets Alberta "Pearl" Johnson, an African-American woman with a difficult past and a vast knowledge of old songs. Pearl agrees to help Susannah, but she wants something important in return. The story is inspired in part by the complicated relationship between musicologist John Avery Lomax, the father of Alan Lomax, and the legendary bluesman Lead Belly. Black Pearl Sings! serves "a vivid reminder that the things that connect us are often stronger than the things which divide us" (Broadway World).

"Writer Frank Higgins celebrates the powerful meaning held in the songs of every culture as they are passed from one generation to the next," says Kitchen Theatre Artistic Director, Rachel Lampert. "The sound of the folk songs, gospel and blues ballads sung by Pearl and Susannah will resonate in the hearts of all."

Black Pearl Sings! will see the return of Kitchen Theatre alum Lisa Gaye Dixon (Yellowman, Pretty Fire at the Kitchen) as Pearl and will welcome newcomer Emily Dorsch as Susannah. Emily has been seen on Broadway in In the Next Room... and in HBO's Boardwalk Empire, among other television, Broadway, Off-Broadway, and regional credits.

Black Pearl Sings! is directed by Sara Lampert Hoover (Neat, The Tricky Part, Souvenir (2008 SALT Award "Best Summer Production"), The Clean House, Yellowman, Crumbs from the Table of Joy, Pretty Fire, among many others at the Kitchen). Lampert Hoover has taught in the theatre departments of Barnard College and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She is a former Artistic Associate with Vermont Stage Company, a Certified Movement Analyst in Laban Movement Studies, and a member of SDC.

Longtime Kitchen Theatre Company designers include lighting and set designer David L. Arsenault and costume designer Lisa Boquist, and will bring back Heroes sound designer, Anthony Mattana.
Kitchen Theatre Company is pleased to have the support of Production Sponsor James Orcutt Real Estate and Media Sponsor WSKG.

In conjunction with the Ithaca premiere of Black Pearl Sings!, the Kitchen Theatre Company will present a number of ancillary events: free pre-show discussions with local experts on issues related to the play and post-show talk backs with the cast and Artistic Director. Pre-show talks are scheduled for Thursday, December 12 at 6:30pm with Cornell Musicologist Steven Pond and Thursday, December 19 at 6:30pm with ICSD School Board Member EldrEd Harris, and talkbacks are scheduled for Friday, December 13 and 20. Please check our website for more events: www.kitchentheatre.org.

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