[NEohioPAL] INSURRECTION: HOLDING HISTORY - 2 WEEKENDS LEFT

[Cory Molner]

Convergence-continuum continues its 2022 season with INSURRECTION: HOLDING HISTORY, by Robert O’Hara.

Struggling with his graduate thesis on slavery, Ron, a gay, black student at Columbia, attends a family reunion to celebrate his great-great-grandfather T.J.’s 189th birthday. Despite the fact that T.J. can’t move, hear, or speak, T.J. (given voice by the spirit of Mutha Wit) convinces Ron to take him back to his old home in Virginia. Fracturing the space-time continuum as they go further south, they arrive on the eve of Nat Turner’s doomed 1831 uprising to see Nat Turner himself racing through the woods. Encouraged to understand his ‘past’ in order to understand his ‘present’ and the perception-altering confrontation with what it means to be ‘free’, Ron discovers that how the authenticity of history unfolds depends on the perception of the storyteller.
“With a script that ranges from mildly disorienting to startlingly evocative, the director Jeannine Gaskin draws some excellent performances out of her nine-person cast. But what resonates most clearly is the need to confront and understand our past for, as George Orwell said and this play reminds us, "He who controls the past controls the future, and he who controls the present controls the past." “ Christine Howey, Cleveland Scene

Winner of the Oppenheimer Award for Best New American Play in 1996, Insurrection: Holding History is a fanciful dramatization of Black history by multi award-winning playwright and director Robert O’Hara. Written during his artist-in-residency at the NY Public Theater, the play garnered immediate acclaim for the burgeoning playwright earning comparisons to a cross between Roots and The Wizard of Oz. The San Francisco Examiner called it “One seriously hilarious and hilariously serious play… remarkably exciting, deeply provocative, [and] comically profound.” Wonderfully witty with time-bending fantastical turns, Insurrection: Holding History is a wild, thrilling ride between past and present.

Insurrection: Holding History is directed by Jeannine Gaskin. The cast features Andrew Pope (TJ) Chelsea Anderson (Izzie Mae), Isaiah Betts (Hammet), Kadijah Wingo (Mutha Wit), Laprise Johnson (Gertha), Matthew Raybeam (Nat Turner), Mike Frye (Cop, Detective, etc.), Sydney Smith (Octavia/Katie Lynn), and Wesley Allen (Ron).
Insurrection: Holding History opens Friday, October 14 and runs Thu-Sat at 8 p.m. through November 5 at convergence-continuum’s Liminis Theater, 2438 Scranton Rd., Cleveland, OH 44113 in the historic Tremont neighborhood. Tickets are $23 general admission, $18 for seniors and $18 for students. Tickets and information are available at www.convergence-continuum.org and 216-687-0074.
USE CODE NEOPAL5 for a 5$ Discount for tickets the weekend of 10/27-/10/29
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