Photo Flash: First Look at Kitchen Theatre's BLACK PEARL SINGS, Begin. 12/4

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. Check out a first look below!

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.

Photo Credit: Dave Burbank