Rose Weaver Presents Two New Staged Readings in Providence on Saturday

Saturday, December 08, 2018

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Rose Weaver

Singer, actress, and producer Rose Weaver joined GoLocal News Editor Kate Nagle on LIVE to talk about two stage readings taking place on Saturday, December 8 at the SouthSide Cultural Center in Providence — “Sally: A Black Woman’s Journey from Africa to Enslavement in Rhode Island” and “Black Women Taking Off Masks.”

“I’ve always tried to write about things that are important to me and hopefully important to the community,” said Weaver. “I’ve done ‘Menopause Mama’ — everybody knows that  — I’ve done ‘Skips the Record’ about Alzheimer’s Disease — and this is about slavery and living in Rhode Island.”

“Sally [was] a slave ship that the Brown University brothers sent to West Africa to pick up slaves, one of the most disastrous slave journeys in the history of slavery,” said Weaver. “I based it on materials that are in the John Carter Brown Library. There’s this wonderful book called ‘Black Mechanics’ — this is [at] the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice at Brown University, so they’ve really done a lot to educate us and that’s what it’s all about, education through arts, from my perspective.”

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“And so Heritage Harbor Commission was kind enough to award me a grant to be able to put this together, I’ve got a group of ten actresses,” said Weaver. 

Weaver spoke to the second reading, “Women Taking of Their Masks.”

“My feeling is that black women have often bitten their tongues when they want to say one thing, they said another. We’ve often been called the ‘angry black woman’ - even Michelle Obama was called an angry black woman, even though she was just speaking her mind and being assertive.”

“You have to ask the question why? So underneath, is it maybe we haven’t been loved enough? Maybe we haven’t been cared for enough? Maybe there’s stuff like that, that's the cause — so I’m exploring that with my actresses,” said Weaver. 

Event Details

The readings start at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday, December 8 at the Southside Cultural Center of Rhode Island at 393 Broad Street in Providence. 

$20 General Admission
$15 seniors and students
$25 at the door (senior and student rate accepted at door)

2:30-3:15: Sally: A Black Woman's Journey from Africa to Enslavement in Rhode Island

The reading dramatizes the journey of the Slave Ship Sally and what might have happened to one African woman on the ship renamed Sally from her capture through through the Middle Passage to enslavement in Rhode Island. Funding provided by the Heritage Harbor Foundation.

3:30-4:30: Black Women Taking Off the Masks

Inspired by Paul Lawrence Dunbar’s poem, "We Wear the Mask,” Black Women Taking Off the Masks is a new script exploring my feeling that American Black women wrestle with knowing authentic love and thus wear masks when it comes to showing their “for real” feelings. It is organized around twelve-bar blues, rap, hip hop lyrics and monologues.  Initial funding by the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts as the winner of the 2018 Fellowship in Playwriting.

Cast: Becky Bass, Ramona-Bass Kolobe, Elizabeth Keiser, Angela Nash Wade, Michaelle Saintil, Wanda Schell, Sylvia Ann Soares, Kim Trusty, Rose Weaver

 

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