Hattiloo’s twelfth season opens with a Pulitzer Prize winner and climaxes with a musical version of A Raisin in the Sun.
Aug. 11-Sept. 3, 2017
Ruined
by Lynn Nottage
This Pulitzer-winner almost didn’t happen. Ms. Nottage was planing to focus her formidable talents on America’s misadventure in Iraq, when Civil War in the Congo caused her to pause. There was another war going on there too, a war against women. The weapon of choice being rape. With Ruined — set in a bar where soldiers from all factions gather — Nottage Reincarnates Mother Courage and Her Children, and brings her into the latest bloody century.
Sept. 15-Oct. 15
Fetch Clay, Make Man
by Will Power
Hattiloo has had good success with The Meeting, a show about Martin Luther King and Malcom X; and also with Mr. Rickey Calls a Meeting which brings baseball giant Branch Rickey together with Jackie Robinson, Paul Robeson, Bill Robinson, etc. So Fetch Clay, Make Man about Muhammed Ali’s friendship with Stepin Fetchit makes perfect sense.
Sept. 29-Oct. 22
Sassy Mamas
by Celeste Bedford Walker
Older girlfriends in Washington, D.C. decide to date young.
Nov. 24-Dec. 17
Take the Soul Train to Christmas
A musical review compiled with a book by Ekundayo Bandele.
Christmas soul, history, and seasonal message.
Jan. 12-Feb. 11, 2018
Sunset Baby
by Dominique Morisseau
The personal and political collide in East Brooklyn when former the wife of a former black revolutionary dies, and he struggles to reconnect with his estranged daughter.
Feb. 23-Mar. 18
Selma: A Musical Tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
by Tommy Butler
Songs for MLK.
April 20-May 13
Jitney
by August Wilson
“You just have to shake off that ‘white folks is against me’ attitude. Hell, they don’t even know you’re alive.”
August Wilson’s plays don’t just show us the black 20th-Century. They show us an America becoming what it is today. This talky, storytelling show is set inside a pre-Uber gypsy cab company. It’s Wilson channeling Arthur Miller, making working class drama swing like jazz and ring like prophesy.
June 8-July 1
Raisin
Book by Robert Nemiroff and Charlotte Zaltzberg, Music by Judd Woldin, Lyrics by Robert Brittan.
Lorraine! Hansberry!
