Black and Brown Theatre Hosts Season Launch Cookout To Kickoff Fourth Season

Black and Brown Theatre, a 501c3 non-profit theatre focused on creating opportunities for theatre artists of color, will host a cookout to celebrate the launch of their fourth season!

Their 2019-2020 season theme is Reimagination in which Black and Brown Theatre is retelling highly imaginative stories with new access points for modern audiences. An adaptation of The Frog Prince told entirely in rhyming couplet verse will open the season. For the winter, Technical Director Jonathan Curry will lead a team into creating a modern adaptation of A Christmas Carol which focuses on his own neighborhood in the Northwest side of Detroit. Lastly, Communications Manager Amber Nicole Price will direct her own version of Hamlet which finds an intersection between the royal flair of Shakespeare's language and the modern taste of today's pop culture society.

As always, the season will also include several other Black and Brown Theatre staple projects such as The Our Voices Project, a program in which community members and high school students write and direct plays starring professional actors, and What Had Happened Was, a semi-improvised show which hands control to the audience who share their personal stories about people they love and people they can't stand based on guided questions from the performers. The season will also continue The Classics in Color Series, which produces staged readings of classic plays accompanied by talkbacks at various universities about how the plays are timeless, timely, and timed out.

The Season Launch Cookout will feature food, networking and fun activities to celebrate the season and encourage forming new working relationships between theatre artists of color and allies. Technical Director Jonathan Curry says, For the last Our Voices Project, we had 15 actors. I was surprised to see that it felt more like a family reunion than a play because everybody was so excited to see each other. It made me think about our events as more than theatre; they are social gatherings that bring our communities together.

Those interested in attending the cookout can go to either the home page or the news section of Black and Brown Theatre's website www.BlackandBrownTheatre.org to order a ticket. Tickets will also be available for $5 cash at the door but space is limited so early arrival is encouraged.

Black and Brown Theatre's Cookout Season Launch will take place Sunday August 4th from 5pm-7pm at Planet Ant Theatre (2357 Caniff St, Hamtramck, MI 48212). For more information, please email: info@blackandbrowntheatre.org.