Dame-Jasmine Hughes

Leviathan Lab Announces Directors And Casting For Its National Filipino American History Month Reading Series
by Chloe Rabinowitz - Oct 12, 2021

In celebration of National Filipino American History Month, Leviathan Lab will present readings of three new plays by rising Filipino American playwrights in October 2021.

BLACKNESS IS… Arts Festival Lineup and Artists Announced
by Chloe Rabinowitz - May 13, 2021

MN Black Theatre Circle, in partnership with the Guthrie Theater, will present Blackness Is…, a theater-inspired arts festival to be streamed May 21–22 at 7:30 p.m. and May 23 at 7 p.m. CDT. Over the course of three days, the festival will offer a dynamic and diverse showcase of theater, music, dance, poetry and spoken word.

BWW Review: World Premiere of Lynn Nottage's Comedy FLOYD'S at the Guthrie
by Karen Bovard - Aug 6, 2019

Playwright Lynn Nottage matters.  Winner of a MacArthur 'genius' grant, she's also been named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine in 2019.  She's the only woman to win two Pulitzer Prizes for drama (for RUINED in 2009 and SWEAT in 2017). Nottage calls FLOYD'S her 'side hustle' to SWEAT.  Commissioned by the Guthrie, it had its world premiere there this past weekend.

BWW Review: World Premiere of BENEVOLENCE at Penumbra Theatre
by Karen Bovard - Feb 25, 2019

Ifa Bayeza's (lower case titled) benevolence, the second play in her trilogy revolving around Emmett Till, the 14 year old Chicago boy brutally murdered in the Mississippi Delta in 1955, is hard to watch. It's also important, because it takes us beyond what we think we know to detail the aftermath of Till's violent death on two couples, one white, one black, all real historical figures. Penumbra Theatre in Saint Paul is mounting the world premiere under Talvin Wilks' direction.

BWW Review: Mixed Blood Theatre's Regional Premiere of the Revenge Fantasy Play IS GOD IS is Filled with Shocking Surprises from Delightful to Horrific
by Jill Schafer - Sep 27, 2018

Playwright Aleshea Harris' play IS GOD IS, receiving just its second production at Minneapolis' Mixed Blood Theatre, is a revenge play. More than that, it's a revenge fantasy. Filled with the kind of vengeance that we don't resort to in real life because we're civilized people, but it sure is fun to think about. When you hear of a man who does horrible things to his wife and/or children, or even worse, experience it first hand, there's a part of the primal brain that wants to deliver an eye for an eye. This play is the cathartic fulfillment of those desires. It reminds me of the Dixie Chicks' song 'Goodbye Earl,' in which two friends conspire to kill the abusive husband of one of them. Critics cried - you're advocating violence and murder, how horrible! No - it's fiction, art, fantasy, metaphor, seeing an evil someone get what they deserve, if only in our imagination. Such is IS GOD IS, tenfold, in all its horrific yet somehow satisfying violence to avenge great hurts against one's self and loved ones.

IS GOD IS Opens September 21 At Mixed Blood Theatre
by Julie Musbach - Aug 21, 2018

Mixed Blood is the only regional theater in America producing, in the playwright's words, this "nuanced exploration of Black female anger."  IS GOD IS "explores the taboo of black female anger and the complexity of survival. It's terrifyingly funny and absurdly violent. It's about love and loyalty sisterhood and rivalry," says director Nataki Garrett.

Mixed Blood Announces 2018-19 Season
by Julie Musbach - Jun 15, 2018

Mixed Blood Theatre is pleased to announce its 2018-19 Season, Transforming the Impossible to the Probable. Speaking truth to power and upending the status quo through theater via provocative programming in which comedy, drama, satire, and extravaganza take on Me Too, automation, Black Lives Matter, abortion, climate change, gender identity, NFL player protests, and, throughout everything, race. The season will put on display Mixed Blood's core value to be predictably unpredictable.

Photo Coverage: The Stars Align Backstage at the 2018 Obie Awards!
by Jennifer Broski - May 22, 2018

The American Theatre Wing (Heather Hitchens, President and CEO) and The Village Voice (Peter Barbey, President and CEO) announced the winners of the 63rd Annual Obie Awards® last night, May 21 at Terminal 5.

Who Won at the 2018 Obie Awards? Full List!
by Nicole Rosky - May 21, 2018

The American Theatre Wing (Heather Hitchens, President and CEO) and The Village Voice (Peter Barbey, President and CEO) announced the winners of the 63rd Annual Obie Awards® on May 21 at Terminal 5.

Soho Rep Adds Second Extension For IS GOD IS, Now Through 3/31
by A.A. Cristi - Feb 21, 2018

Soho Rep. (Sarah Benson, Artistic Director; Cynthia Flowers, Executive Director), has extended the world premiere of Aleshea Harris's Relentless Award-winning Is God Is, directed by Taibi Magar, a second time, through March 31.

Soho Rep. Extends Aleshea Harris's IS GOD IS Through March 25
by Julie Musbach - Feb 5, 2018

In response to popular demand, Soho Rep. (Sarah Benson, Artistic Director; Cynthia Flowers, Executive Director) extends the world premiere of Aleshea Harris's Relentless Award-winning Is God Is, directed by Taibi Magar by two weeks, through March 25. In this play, which dauntlessly cracks jokes as it eviscerates, twin sisters Anaia (Alfie Fuller) and Racine (Dame-Jasmine Hughes) undertake a murderous journey from the Dirty South to the California desert, seeking payback for a horrendous act. Is God Is treats both morality and genre as notions to be exploded, drawing on the ancient, the modern, the tragic, the Spaghetti Western, hip-hop and Afropunk in its subversion of theatrical constructs.

Soho Rep. Announces Complete Casting And Creative Team For Aleshea Harris's IS GOD IS
by Rebecca Russo - Jan 18, 2018

Soho Rep. (Sarah Benson, Artistic Director; Cynthia Flowers, Executive Director) today announces the complete cast and creative team for the world premiere of Aleshea Harris's Relentless Award-winning Is God Is, directed by Taibi Magar (Ars Nova's Underground Railroad Game), February 6 - March 11, 2018. The play, with which Soho Rep. reopens its longtime Tribeca theater, dauntlessly cracks jokes as it eviscerates. Alfie Fuller and Dame-Jasmine Hughes play Anaia and Racine, twin sisters who undertake a murderous journey from the Dirty South to the California desert, seeking payback for a horrendous act. Is God Is treats both morality and genre as notions to be exploded, drawing on the ancient, the modern, the tragic, the Spaghetti Western, hip-hop and Afropunk in its subversion of theatrical constructs.

BWW Review: Penumbra Theatre's WEDDING BAND is a Beautiful and Tragic Love Story that Speaks to Race, Racism, and Privilege
by Jill Schafer - Oct 26, 2017

I love a good tragic love story, and it doesn't get much more tragic than an interracial couple in 1918 South Carolina. But Penumbra's gorgeous production of the 1966 play WEDDING BAND by Alice Childress (whose TROUBLE IN MIND was seen at the Guthrie last year) is not just a beautiful, complicated, and ultimately tragic love story. It's also (not unlike TROUBLE IN MIND) a still timely work that speaks to the issues of race, racism, and privilege in ways that feel entirely relevant. With a super talented cast directed by Penumbra's founder Lou Bellamy (who recently passed the Artistic Director baton to his daughter Sarah) and gorgeous design, WEDDING BAND is a show not to be missed, and my favorite of my five-show weekend.