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Event
SUNDOWN TOWN - B8 New Works Series
Please join us this summer for our New Works Staged Reading Series. Every weekend from July 14 through August 13, B8 will celebrate local playwrights and their works via staged readings. This is a great opportunity to be one of the first to hear and respond to a new work and perhaps even have a say in what might become part of a future B8 season.
SUNDOWN TOWN takes place in a fictional town in east Texas in 1948 and primarily portrays how playwright, Harold Smith, imagined those residents acted and reacted to a situation that they created. Starting sometime in the late 1800s, many, many towns in the Midwest, southwest, and northeast excluded people of color. Smith was born in one of those towns - Caddo, Oklahoma - in 1939; no black person could be in Caddo after sundown. Hence, the name given to those places: Sundown Town or Gray Town. This piece explores what it might have been to be a black man stuck in a sundown town after dark as well what it meant to be a white person faced with a black man after dark. Join us for a look at the legal racism in our U.S. history and stay for the talk back the playwright.
THREE PERFORMANCES ONLY:
A Staged Reading of Sundown Town
by Harold Smith
directed by JanLee Marshall
Friday, July 14 & Saturday, July 15 at 8pm and Sunday, July 16 at 2pm
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT
Sacramento-based Harold Smith is a retired math teacher who took up playwriting in 2005. His Plays Welcome to Little Fork, Rene Lundstrom (2016) and Zelda's Mama's Cookin' (2008) both had their World Premieres with B8. In 2010, another of his plays, Dick Stricklands Sycamore Service, won 2nd place and a staged reading at Stage West Theatres Texas Playwrights Competition in Fort Worth. He maintains everything he knows about playwriting he learned from Gary Graves and all of the playwrights at Central Works Playwriting Workshop.
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LocationB8 Theatre Company (View)
2292 Concord Blvd.
Concord, CA 94520
United States
Categories
| Dog Friendly: No |
| Non-Smoking: Yes! |
| Wheelchair Accessible: Yes! |
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