The Bronze Collective Theatre Festival puts plays by Black artists front and center.
David Shakes
Posted inCulture
Genesee Country Village & Museum reckons with representation
The museum’s inaugural commemoration of Juneteenth is part an effort to more accurately portray the people of 19th-century western New York.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
North Star Players’ David Shakes and the bite of change
Theater director David Shakes looks back at the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and looks ahead to the North Star Players’ 2021 revival of Deborah Solomon’s “Emancipation Denied.”
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Calendar preview: A fuse for freedom
This Independence Day is packed with discussions and vigils reminding us to closely consider the concept of freedom and justice for all.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
North Star Players celebrates Frederick Douglass’s legacy through multimedia production
Two hundred years have passed since trailblazing abolitionist and famous Rochesterian Frederick Douglass was born. And while his bicentennial is cause for celebration, it’s also a sobering reminder: It’s 2018 and mass incarceration of African Americans and police brutality are still national maladies; civil rights advocates from Black Lives Matter to professional athletes are still […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Black Wall Street comes alive in new play
Following the Civil War, African-Americans began to establish all-black townships in the Indian and Oklahoma Territories. One of those townships was Greenwood — located north of the tracks in Tulsa. Created in 1906 by O.W. Gurley, one of Tulsa’s earliest pioneers, and other black entrepreneurs who invested in property, Greenwood over time became a self-sufficient […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Theater review: “The Amen Corner” at MuCCC
James Baldwin’s “The Amen Corner,” performed by the North Star Players under the direction of David Shakes, opened at MuCCC (142 Atlantic Avenue) on Tuesday evening. Between moving monologues, well-navigated layers of moral ambiguity, and singing that will give you goosebumps, this production is community theater at its finest. Through the course of the play, […]
