Black Arts MKE will kick off its three-week-long 2024 MKE Black Theatre Festival tonight at Alice’s Garden in Milwaukee with Youth & Family Night. The three-week-long theater festival will have four showcase productions and additional events to support and celebrate Black creatives.
Black Arts MKE’s mission is to increase the availability and quality of African American arts and culture. The MKE Black Theatre Festival will continue tomorrow, Aug. 8, with the opening night of two productions, The Realness and For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf.
Throughout August, the festival will feature both ticketed and free events, including full-production plays, a staged reading, an audition masterclass, a youth and family night, auditions, a poetry set, and more, according to a press release from Black Arts MKE, and events will be hosted at various venues across Milwaukee, including Wilson Theater at Vogel Hall, Todd Wehr Theater and Studio 4A at Marcus Center, The Table, Alice’s Garden, Insomniac Studios, and HoneyBee Sage. The festival marks the beginning of a year-long celebration of Black Arts MKE’s 10th anniversary.
The four showcase productions, per Black Arts MKE, will include:
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf by Ntozake Shange (1948-2018), directed by Linetta Alexander. An enduring worldwide hit from 1976, the play is written in a series of monologues that illuminate the kaleidoscope of Black women’s experiences, weaving a vibrant tapestry of resilience, pain, and triumph. Through the poetic mosaic of individual narratives, the play highlights the significance of Black women as a ‘third place’ for each other—a sanctuary where shared stories, sorrows, and joys converge to forge bonds of solidarity. See a preview of the cast here.
August 8-25, 7:30 p.m. Wilson Theater at Vogel Hall. Tickets are now on sale.
The Realness: A Break Beat Play by playwright and rapper Idris Goodwin, directed by Denzel Taylor. 1996 is an incredible time to be a hip-hop fan, so the moment T. O. escapes the suburbs, he plunges into the scene, eager to experience the culture for himself. It doesn’t get much more real than Prima, a super-dope MC supporting her family, and the moment he meets her, T. O. falls madly in love. But when he becomes tangled in the lies he tells to get closer to her, he’s forced to ask himself: is he after real love, or fulfilling a middle-class fantasy of rap? Idris Goodwin takes on tough questions of authenticity and class collision with humor, heart, and killer rhymes in a coming-of-age tale set to the beat of hip-hop history. Productions run August 8-25, 7:30 p.m. at Todd Wehr Theater. Tickets are now on sale. Bonus: Meet the Playwright Idris Goodwin on Opening Night, August 8th at 5:00 p.m. See a preview of the cast here.
Stories About the Old Days by Kresge Eminent Artist Awardee Bill Harris, directed by Nic Starr & Sheri Williams Pannell in collaboration with Bronzeville Arts Ensemble. A former blues singer living in a decaying church in Detroit never ventures out into the world that rejected him. While playing checkers he and Ivy, one the last members of the congregation, move from animosity to friendship. Both have secrets from the old days: he conceals his struggle of faith and despair and she withholds a searing loss as they rescue each other from emotional numbness and terminal loneliness. See the show August 15-17, 7:30 p.m. at The Table, 5305 W. Capitol Drive. Tickets are now on sale.
A live reading of In The Blood by Suzan-Lori Parks (b.1963), directed by Lori Woodall. A modern story inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1850 classic, The Scarlet Letter. August 20, 7:30 p.m. at The Table, 5305 W. Capitol Drive pay-what-you-can at the door.
Throughout August, the festival will feature a variety of other events. For the full schedule, click here.
