Tina Knowles Lawson Hosts Panel Featuring Black Women Activists, Artists and Scholars, Streaming on March 15 to Celebrate Women’s History Month

Published by New Jersey Stage
originally published: 03/11/2022

(LOS ANGELES, CA) -- WACO Theater Center, Newark Symphony Hall and Yendor Theatre Company will be hosting Revolutionary Black Women, a virtual salon centering on the role Black women play in movements of social change, on March 15. Moderated by WACO Theater Center’s Co-Artistic Director Tina Knowles Lawson, the panel features activist Elaine Brown, theatremaker Erin Michelle Washington, dramaturg and CUNY Professor of African American Studies Marta Effinger Crichlow and artists Michele Morgan and Taylor Edwards, featured in the film “Black Terror”.

The roundtable is the first in a series of three virtual events leading up to the premiere of the film “Black Terror,” this Fall directed by WACO Theater Center’s Co-Artistic Director Richard Lawson.

"WACO was created to celebrate Black culture and art through engaging and thought-provoking initiatives,” said Richard Lawson. “The special livestream events discuss the struggles for freedom both now and in the past and raise important questions on what it means to be revolutionary.”

“We [Black women] were warriors, because we were always at war with the oppression around us and I’m very happy to come out of a family of women who were fighters against that oppression,” said Brown.

Slated to premiere in Fall 2022, “Black Terror” is a bicoastal adaption of Richard Wesley’s classic play from 1971, and is a collaboration between Wesley, WACO Theater Center and Newark Symphony Hall. The production combines theater and film as it weaves together the pulse of liberation struggles both past and present. It calls upon audiences to ask: What does it truly mean to be for the people?

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Panelists include:

* Elaine Brown, a former leader of the Black Panther Party as Minister of Information and Chairman;

* Erin Michelle Washington, the founder of Soul Productions, a company that exposes urban communities to independent artists who are pioneering new approaches to music and theater;

* Marta Effinger Crichlow, a dramatist who has worked across the U.S. for over twenty years and whose work centers the lives of Black women and girls;

* Michele Morgan, an actress and NAACP Theater Award recipient for her role in “Pearl,” and plays N’Zingha in the upcoming film adaption of “Black Terror”;

* and Taylor Edwards, an actress born and raised in Dallas, Texas, In the upcoming film “Black Terror,” Edwards plays M’Balia, a strong, determined and devoted revolutionary who is willing to sacrifice everything she loves for the sake of here people.

The panel will be streamed on WACO Theater Center’s website.

Located in the burgeoning North Hollywood Arts District of Los Angeles, WACO Theater Center is one of the few Los Angeles cultural institutions dedicated to contemporary performing and visual art of the African Diaspora. Driven by the mantra, “Where Art Can Occur,” WACO is dedicated to the empowerment of artists within a diversified pool of its L.A. communities and beyond. WACO centers around giving emerging and established artists of African descent a platform and a voice to use their creativity, in order to connect and inspire individuals and communities throughout the African Diaspora.  

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Born in 1925, Newark Symphony Hall (NSH) has been the home of almost a century of arts and culture in what is now one of New Jersey’s oldest and largest arts and entertainment venues. NSH remains as committed as ever to providing an artistically rich experience for art lovers of all ages, while creating career pathways for people of color from around the world – and bettering both its community and the Greater Newark region. 

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Yendor Theatre Company, co-founded in 2016 by Rodney Gilbert and Andrew Binger, develops, produces and celebrates works by historically resilient Black and Brown writers, women writers and writers from the LGBTQ+ community. Their work explores challenging themes such as police brutality, mental illness and racism, while also celebrating beautiful ones like forbidden love, community building and faith. 

 

 

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