SHIRLEY GRAHAM DUBOIS & A BIRTHDAY PARTY!

On Her Shoulders is pleased to present a staged reading of I Gotta Home and It’s Morning by Shirley Graham Du Bois on Thursday, June 18th. Doors open at 5:45pm for a 6:00pm start with The Play in Context introduction by Ashley M. Thomas, who situates the script in its historical time and place. Adrienne Williams directs.

After the readings help us celebrate Juneteenth and our 34th Birthday!

Admission for the readings and Birthday Party is $20 for refreshments, drinks and birthday cake!

“I Gotta Home” and “It’s Morning” were both written in 1939 while Graham Du Bois was the head of the Chicago Unit of the Federal Theatre Project. It's Morning follows Cissie, a desperate mother suffering during slavery in the U.S. South in 1862, deciding whether it's better for her child to live enslaved or die free. Often credited as a forerunner of Toni Morrison's Beloved, this play explores grief and the sacrifices a mother makes for her children. I Gotta Home, a comedy, follows Reverend Cobb and his large family as they try to make ends meet in 1938. When his long-lost sister appears with an inherited fortune, the family is sent into a tailspin.

Shirley Graham Du Bois (Playwright) was a nationally recognized playwright, composer, author and activist. She was also the second wife of activist W. E. B. Du Bois. Graham Du bois was a prominent figure in African American theatre and known for her composition of all-Black operas. During her lifetime she was awarded the Anisfield-Wolf Prize for her work on Your Most Humble Servant, a biography of Benjamin Banneker and she was awarded the prestigious Julien Messner Award for her biography of Frederick Douglass, titled There was Once a Slave. She was born Lola Shirley Graham Jr. on November 11th, 1896 to Reverend David A. Graham and Elizabeth Etta Bell Graham in Indianapolis, Indiana. She was one of six children, and the only girl among them. In 1926, Graham moved to Paris, France, to study music composition at the Sorbonne. Her exposure there to African and Afro-Caribbean people inspired her to begin composing Tom-Tom: An Epic of Music and the Negro, which premiered as a full opera in Cleveland in 1932.

ADRIENNE WILLIAMS (Director) is a native New Yorker born in Harlem and raised in Brooklyn by very loving southern parents. She holds an MFA from Binghamton University. She is a former Artistic Associate at Martha's Vineyard Playhouse and is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Hunter College. Her recent directing credits include By The Way, Meet Vera Stark at Fordham Lincoln Center, The Ripple, The Wave That Carried Me Home by Christina Anderson at Luna Stage and the world premiere of Fish by Kia Corthron Off Broadway. Adrienne is represented by Bonnie Davis at Bret Adams Ltd.

ASHLEY M. THOMAS (Dramaturg) If June Ambrose and James Baldwin had a baby, it’d be Ashley M. Thomas. Born and bred in Harlem, NY, Ashley is an artist whose work—spanning plays, poems, creative criticism, and short stories — centers on Black life from the mundane to the surreal. She’s a proud alumna of the First Wave Urban Arts Scholarship at University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she graduated with her Bachelor of Social Work. She also holds an MFA in Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism from Yale School of Drama. Ashley is a Libra Sun, Aries Rising, and Taurus Moon.

ON HER SHOULDERS was founded in 2013 to present rehearsed, staged readings of plays by women from across the spectrum of time and place, with contemporary dramaturgs contextualizing scripts for modern audiences. Since its creation, the OHS reading series has presented 70 plays by 54 writers from circa 955 to 1970 as well as special events on Theatre Women in the Suffrage and Radical Theatre Movements. A unique aspect of the Reading Series is the Play In Context component, which includes a dramaturgical essay that analyzes each featured play within its own time and place; a substantial playwright biography; and an introduction to a reading or performance by a dramaturg who brings a personal perspective to the dramatist and her work. All readings include a post-performance talk-back with refreshments. OHS also hosts a unique international database, 1,000 Years of Women Writing Plays, which is free to all: Link to Database

For more information about ON HER SHOULDERS, contact Program Manager Liadin Stewart or visit https://tinyurl.com/OHSatNPTC