Working Theater Presents A Benefit Reading Of I AM A MAN

Working Theater presents a Benefit Reading of the 1993 Hit I AM A MAN by OYAMO and directed by BILL MITCHELSON on Monday, February 22, 2010 at 7pm, followed by a post-performance reception with the artists at the Abingdon Theatre Arts Complex, June Havoc Theatre located at 312 W 36th Street (btwn 8th & 9th Aves).

Click here for tickets or call 212-868-4444

Commissioned by Working Theater in 1991 OyamO's explosive drama has been produced in venues around the country. It returns to New York for a one-night-only reading directed by Working Theater founding member Bill Mitchelson.

On February 12, 1968, African-American sanitation workers, members of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 1733, struck the Memphis Department of Public Workers. Prior to the strike, newly elected Mayor Henry Loeb had refused to negotiate with Local 1733's president or to recognize the union. Within weeks, the city's African-American community, under the leadership of 150 black clergymen, united to defend and support the sanitation workers. I am a Man tells the story of this fight for workers' and civil rights that erupted into riots and culminated in the assassination of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"A gripping new play by OyamO . . . the play takes unflinching aim at the often vitriolic feuds between the militant and the nonviolent arms of the civil rights movement and the liberal Jews who marched beside them" Wilborn Hampton, The New York Times, May 20, 1993

Tickets are $25 for this special benefit reading, which will be followed by a reception with the cast, director and playwright.
Click here to purchase tickets

OyamO (a.k.a. Charles F. Gordon) has received playwriting fellowships and awards from the Berrilla Kerr, Guggenhiem, Rockefeller, and McKnight Foundations and has been awarded grants from the Ohio and New York State Arts Councils and three NEA Fellowships. His plays have been produced in numerous theatres, including the Goodman in Chicago (I Am A Man, originally commissioned and produced by the Working Theater and Let Me Live originally produced by the Working Theater); The Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., the Seattle Children's Theatre (Pink And Say); the Minneapolis Children's Theatre (Boundless Grace); Manhattan Theatre Club and CBS Cable TV (The Resurrection of Lady Lester); the New York Shakespeare Festival's Public Theatre (His First Step); the Kennedy Center, and the Wexner Center (In Living Colors); and the GeVa Theatre (Famous Orpheus). His play, I Am A Man, was optioned by HBO, for which he also wrote the Ida B. Wells Story for the Famous Black American Anthology. TriStar Pictures commissioned him to do the treatment for The Ota Benga Story. He studied at Yale, and is a member of PEN, Dramatists Guild, New Dramatists (alumnus), the Ensemble Studio Theatre, and Writers Guild East. OyamO is an Associate Professor of Theatre and writer-in-residence at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

To post a comment, you must register and login.