Passage Theatre Company To Stage Amiri Baraka Plays DUTCHMAN and THE SLAVE

Hot off the heels of a landmark 40th Anniversary season, Passage Theatre Company is starting season 41 with a staging of two of Amiri Baraka's plays, Dutchman and The Slave, directed as two acts of one full-length play by Passage Theatre's season 41 artist-in-residence Ozzie Jones. This production stars Phillip Brown as CLAY and WALKER, Deidre Rose as LULA and GRACE, and Peter Bisgaier as BRADFORD EASLEY.

Dutchman is an emotionally charged and highly symbolic version of the Adam and Eve story, set on a subway car, was the first critical success for playwright/activist LeRoi Jones, aka Amiri Baraka. The Slave takes place in the middle of a revolution as an examination of racial tension in contemporary America. The Slave is the story of Walker Vessles, a Black man who visits the home of his ex-wife, a white woman now married to a white professor, to retrieve his children.

Director Ozzie Jones writes, "The same actors will play both plays. Exploring the experience of the madness of Race in youth and middle age, in the risky passion of meeting/dating, and the gruff reality of marriage and divorce. In our production, Western Civilization itself is put under the microscope: its racism, its greed, its bigotry-but not its people."

"The once-treasured words of Amiri Baraka, our former poet laureate, now have been forgotten," shares Executive Artistic Director Brishen Miller. "It is time to remember those words-yet every poet knows there is no safety in words. We will be Not Afraid."

New Jersey Awards - Live Stats

Best Musical - Top 3

1. THE LITTLE MERMAID (HOWELL PAL THEATRE COMPANY)

3.2% of votes

2. GREASE (Plays-in-the-Park)

2.9% of votes

3. SCHOOL OF ROCK (Playhouse 22)

2.8% of votes

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